The Last Flock Member
by Nightfall Daybreak
Summary: Set in Book 3. Max and the flock aren't the only avian hybrids--the Chinese also created a flock. Xiang is the only one left after her flock is terminated. She joins an Eraser and they set out to find Max. Will they find the flock and help their mission?
1. Termination

"The boss needs to see you. Now."

The harsh words were spat out in Chinese by the scientist standing in front of her. Xiang looked up into the stern, rigid face of the geneticist and immediately felt a sense of foreboding settling over her heart. How many times had she heard those words? Every time, they had resulted into some frightening new test, often a test that would leave her body aching all over by the time they were finished. Sometimes wounds were left on her skin, bleeding, and only when she was too hurt or exhausted would they stop. What was going to happen to her this time?

"_Shen di_!" snarled the scientist coldly. "Right now!" She shoved Fong, the boy standing nearest to her, so roughly that he stumbled and nearly fell against the floor. Xiang put out her hand to help him up, gritting her teeth. She hated watching anyone hurting any person in her flock—from Jinlong, the oldest and the unofficial leader, to Jiaxing, who was only three.

There were five of them. Each one had been genetically modified, their genes combined with that of birds. They were ninety-eight percent human, two percent bird. Astonishingly enough, they had wings.

And they weren't the only ones.

They had been created by a School in China a few years before the flock of Maximum Ride had been created in California. At the time, many scientists were planning to experiment with recombinant DNA life-forms, but China was the first to test their theories. The first group of hybrids had come out wrong, and had died. Their first successful experiment was Jinlong, the sixteen-year-old leader of the Chinese flock. The scientists hadn't gone to brag about it to the Director, though. They had kept him secret, and created four other successful hybrids. When word reached the scientists of another flock being made in California, they immediately became interested. They began to search for any records of the other flock's abilities, and the Chinese flock was forced, day after day, to try to beat their records.

They had been created to rival Maximum Ride, every one of them.

Jinlong, Hybrid 105, had been crossed with the DNA of a Chinese Goshawk. By far the strongest and toughest out of the Chinese flock, he was gifted with a pair of enormous, powerful pale blue-gray wings, tipped with black. He was sixteen years old, and fierce-tempered, suiting his protective nature to defend the flock. His name meant "golden dragon." He acted as a father or older brother to them all.

Second oldest was Yueyin, Hybrid 112. She was fifteen and extremely beautiful. Her eyes were pieces of sky taken from the night, and straight dark hair fell past her shoulders, cut into shining layers. Her wings were that of a crane's, snowy white and graceful. She was a gentle mother and older sister to the rest of them, and her sensitive character made her second-in-command to Jinlong. Her name meant "moon cloud." Xiang loved her beyond words. Yueyin was what she and the others had never had; while Jinlong protected the flock, she was the one who cared for them.

Fong, Hybrid 127, was eleven. Xiang thought of him as a younger brother. He had feathery black hair that always seemed to stick up, despite Yueyin's efforts to comb it straight, matching his easy temper. He liked to tease, but never minded being teased back. A pair of pale thrush's wings adorned his back, pale brown rimmed with dark gray flight feathers. His name meant "wind."

The youngest of the flock was three-year-old Jiaxing, Hybrid 131. Her name meant "heart of the family," and it suited her. Being the youngest, Jiaxing was greatly spoiled by the other members of the flock, and she was the center of their attention. She was adorable, Xiang thought, with large round eyes and short-cut black hair. Her wings were so tiny and feathery, taken from an Asian Brown Flycatcher. They were pale dove-gray and very light. She was beginning to learn how to fly.

And then there was Xiang, Hybrid 120. Her own wings were a slightly teal stone gray, streaked with bright blue feathers, taken from a Fairy Pitta. She was nearly thirteen, with dark hair cut a little higher than her elbow and round eyes. Her name meant "to circle like a bird." She had a mild personality and a strong sense of love for her flock, but sometimes she wondered if she wasn't strong enough. One time, one of the scientists had hit her when she hadn't flown fast enough, and she'd cried, right in front of them. Jinlong had told her she needed to be tougher, to keep up a hard exterior and always be on guard.

Xiang hated the School passionately, having to be trapped inside this disgusting building of horrors, where she could never enjoy flying just for the sake of it. No, whenever they flew, the scientists would be below, tracking their speed and height and screaming, "_Gun gao! Gun kwi! _Higher! Faster!" And if they weren't making progress, they would be punished.

Sometimes, she even hated Maximum Ride.

Her senses would return to her though, and she would remember that it was the fault of the School. Wherever Maximum Ride and her own flock were, they were sure to be suffering the same fate as her flock. They were avian hybrids, and under the control of scientists. Perhaps, in their School in California, the American scientists were forcing them to try to beat records, just like she had to. When she thought of this, her anger would dissolve in sympathy. But her hatred for the School was a hard, cold rock in the pit of her stomach, heavy and unmovable.

"Move!" snapped the scientist suddenly, pushing Xiang forward. Startled out of her thoughts, the hybrid stood there, confused for a second, before the scientist shoved her again. "I said, move, you fool! This is extremely important!"

Yueyin took Xiang's arm gently and glared at the scientist. "You didn't have to push her," she said coldly. "We're going." She could be as tough as Jinlong when she wanted to be. Yueyin led Xiang and the younger children down the empty lab. Xiang looked back at the scientist and was shocked to see a flash of fear creasing her face. Something was definitely wrong. This was no ordinary conference with the boss. Fear ignited like a leaping flame in her stomach, and she held on to Yueyin's arm.

At the head of the flock, Jinlong strode confidently through the door to the conference area, his face stoic and cleverly masked. Xiang followed Yueyin, and Fong came last, carrying Jiaxing. Panic flared in Xiang's chest as she looked around at the blank white walls, the stage where the lectern stood, the rows of tables. Wild thoughts raced through her mind in a tangle of confusion and fear. Anything was possible here in this madhouse—what new sick experiment were they going to perform on them? She glanced around at her flock members for comfort, and saw that every line on Jinlong's body was rigid with suppressed tension. He was expecting something, too.

At last, the leader of the School entered the conference area, flanked by other scientists. Xiang felt her flock tense around her, preparing for his words. She glared at him as he seated himself at a table in front of them. The leader of the school was an averagely tall man, slightly wide around the stomach, with thinning black hair. Xiang disliked his eyes most of all—tiny eyes like a pig's, set in his round, squashy face, always narrowed in a cruel, malicious expression. He sneered at his experiments for a moment with the contemptuous look he reserved for them, as he if he didn't consider them worthy of being equals.

Terror latched itself to Xiang's throat as he turned his eyes on her, but she forced it down. _Be brave, be brave_.

"Well?" demanded Jinlong as the boss continued to stare steadily at them. "Are we going to play a staring-contest game? Or will you actually tell us what you summoned us here for?"

Xiang admired his courage, his willingness to defend the flock. She could never have faced up to the leader like that. She stared at the leader, words of loathing pushing up in her throat, words she would never dare to say.

The boss slowly turned his eyes on Jinlong, who returned the glance steadily. "It is obvious that you have been summoned here for something," he spat. A superior look entered his eyes. Xiang felt as if he were secretly taunting them, mocking them. _How foolish you all are! I know more than you do. I made you. _Like a cat would toy with a captured bird right before the kill. It made Xiang feel hunted, knowing that someone else knew more about her than she did herself.

The boss laced his fat fingers together. "I have just received a message from the Director," he began. "Concerning _all _our recombinant DNA life-forms." Xiang felt Yueyin stiffen beside her. "She had something of great importance to say."

Here he paused, and a cruel smirk twisted his features before he continued, every word loaded with spears of ice:

"_You are all going to be terminated_."


	2. A Choice Between Life and Death

**Yay! I'm on my second chapter! **

**I have to give thanks to FallingSnow14 and Madeline Cullen for being my first reviewers. Thank you both so, so much. When I read your kind reviews, I felt motivated to continue. And this was my first fanfiction, so it means a lot to me. Thank you again. **

**________________________________________________________________________**

Xiang felt her throat tighten in horror. _What had he said_?

"This is ridiculous!" Jinlong stormed. In two strides he crossed the room toward the boss and rammed his fist against the table. The boss flinched as Jinlong brought his face close to his and spoke in a threatening whisper. "What do you mean, we're going to be terminated?"

"W-what's terminated?" Fong whispered, his voice shaken. Yueyin did not answer but stared straight ahead, her face blank with fear.

"It's true," the boss blustered, attempting to regain some of his dignity. "The Director sent very specific instructions in her message. All over the world, Schools are terminating their recombinant DNA life-forms, even as we speak."

Never before had the prospect of dying terrified Xiang so. Perhaps it was the fact of it that was frightening—she could not argue with fact. Or perhaps it was the cold certainty in her mind that she, and her dearly loved flock, would suffer a hard and brutal death, long before her time.

She didn't want to die. She couldn't die, not now.

A scream of animal terror was building up in her chest, pushing out against the walls of her throat, but she held it back, swallowing. It was a fierce struggle to contain the tears that threatened to leak out onto her cheeks.

Jiaxing began to wriggle around, uncomfortable with the tense silence that was filling the conference room. Yueyin took her from Fong's arm and mechanically began to rock her back and forth, trying to soothe her, but Jiaxing began to cry. "I don't like him! I don't like him!" she wailed, plainly meaning the boss.

The flock turned cold, furious eyes on the lead scientist.

"You wouldn't dare," Jinlong growled. Xiang saw the boss swallow nervously.

"The Director's orders are the Director's orders," the leader repeated in agitation. "Your pestering won't help matters!" He leaned forward. "You were never even supposed to be made, you know. The Director commanded that only the American flock were supposed to be created, as well as a few other test subjects. But not you!"

_We're going to die, _Xiang thought dully. Her mind, stunned by the leader's death sentence, seemed to be slowing down. Her pulse throbbed heavily in her ears. _We're going to die_.

"You can't seriously be considering this," Jinlong hissed, his hand curling tightly into a fist as his temper rose. "What kind of irresponsible scientists are you? Making us against orders, and then having the right to just kill us off because your leader feels like it? What reasons do you have for wanting to kill us, anyway?"

"Do you honestly think we'll just stand tamely for this?" Yueyin added, stepping up beside Jinlong. Her words carried a very subtle threat, but a threat nevertheless: the flock would risk everything for each other's lives.

The leader glanced around at his fellow scientists. "Why the Director wishes to destroy you is something I'm not at liberty to discuss," he answered curtly. "But, you've been making progress at beating the American flock's records—so far. So we're going to make a deal with you."

He paused, and looked at the flock. Jinlong appeared to be thinking this quickly through; his eyes darted back and forth, studying the leader's face as if wondering if it was a trap. After a moment, the flock leader nodded.

"Go on," he snarled. "But we're not agreeing to anything just yet."

The boss cleared his throat. "Very well. The deal we are offering you is this: In exchange for not terminating you and letting you live, you will continue abiding by our rules and performing the tests we assign you. You will spend the rest of your lives here, in the lab, so we can work together on honing your skills to a significant point. We will hide you from the Director, so you will be safe from harm, and you will be under our care."

He looked expectantly at the flock.

"Under your _care_? You mean, in your _captivity_," snapped Jinlong. "So you're saying we're just going to continue living here the way we've lived the past years of our lives. That isn't much of a deal."

"We are letting you live!" shouted the leader, panic flaring in his beady eyes. "We're disobeying the Director's orders. That is an enormous sacrifice on our part!"

"And what did _we _sacrifice?" Yueyin asked acidly. The leader did not reply.

"Either way, we're going to sacrifice our lives," Jinlong said angrily. "If you call just scraping by in this pitiful science laboratory living, you're insane."

"It's the difference between life and death!" protested the leader, waving his arms. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"It's a fine line between life and death, actually," retorted Jinlong.

_The leader is just as reluctant for us to die as we are, _Xiang realized as she watched Jinlong spit fire right back at the boss. _He was so close to beating the American flock's records. He considers it a shame for us to die, right now. He's desperate._

"You need _us _more than weneed _you_," Jinlong was saying. "All you are concerned with is creating the perfect avian-hybrids. Making us beat the records of the American flock. And after that is all done, you'll try to make us beat our _own _records. Who knows, you might even create more hybrids, in the hope of making more perfect ones. We won't condemn more innocent children to suffering the same fate we do. We won't help you."

The lead scientist swallowed, and beads of sweat broke out on his deeply lined forehead. Xiang could tell that he hadn't expected the flock to choose to die instead. "What about Hybrid 131?" he stammered, gesturing to the whimpering Jiaxing. "She's only three. Would you condemn her to death?"

Jinlong arched an eyebrow. "Would _you_?"

There was another tense moment of silence as the scientists formed a small group across the table and muttered and whispered, obviously trying to figure out another way to bribe them. Xiang looked up at Jinlong, who still stood over the table, his face fixed in a threatening scowl. Despite the pit of fear churning in her stomach, she felt a deep flash of pride in her older brother. Standing up so boldly and courageously against the lead scientist like that!

Finally the huddle of scientists broke up, and the boss turned back to the flock. "We have decided to give you more time to think on our offer," he said. "You clearly haven't considered it completely yet. You need more time."

Fong let out a quiet snort of derision. Jinlong's eyes didn't move from the boss's face. His dark eyes bored deeply into his tiny, beady ones with such an unnerving, poisonous look that more perspiration crawled down the leader's face. Finally, the flock leader spoke, in a tone edged with steel.

"Very well. We'll _think _on it," he spat, and then turned sharply on his heel. The flock gathered around him as he strode out of the door. The scientists scurried after them, murmuring urgently to one another.

Xiang didn't care what they were saying—they could whisper all they like, but she knew they would never be able to force them into helping them again. She trotted quickly to the front of the group and whispered to Jinlong, "You were brilliant!"

"Yeah!" Fong added quietly. "The boss was so frightened of you!"

Jinlong didn't reply, but Xiang saw a slight smile crack the stony expression etched in his face. He stroked their hair, showing one of his rare signs of affection.

That night, instead of placing them in their customary animal crates, the flock was taken to a metal-walled room similar to a jail cell, with a few rusty metal beds against the walls. The metal door screeched against its hinges as the scientists pulled it closed, locked it, and left, still chattering amongst themselves.

"Wonder why we were brought here?" Fong inquired, patting one of the beds.

"So they could convince us to choose to work with them, no doubt," Jinlong said scornfully from where he was leaning against the wall, a heavy note of derision in his tone.

"At least we have beds," Yueyin pointed out gently. "And we can stretch our wings."

She sat down on a bed and arched her back, her beautiful snowy white wings unfurling and extending from her shoulder blades. She beat them once or twice, then lay down across the bare mattress. Jiaxing toddled over to her bed, shrieking in delight as she stretched out her own tiny feathery wings. Yueyin smiled and lifted her onto the mattress.

Xiang sat down on the cold floor and unfolded her own teal-tinted gray wings. It felt wonderful to stretch her wing muscles. When they had been stuffed in crates, she had little room to do more than pull her wings a few inches away from her back. Fong sat down next to her and did the same. A mischievous grin in his eyes, he suddenly beat his wings so wildly that a wind whipped up in Xiang's face.

Xiang drew her wings around her like a shield to ward off Fong's wind. "Stop that!" she laughed from within her cocoon. She fluttered her wings sharply, directing a wind right back at him. Fong just laughed, unaffected.

Xiang felt a slight smile curl her lips upward. Whatever was going to happen to them, she was happy now and nothing else mattered. She glanced upward and saw Yueyin and Jinlong conferring quietly beside the wall. Their voices were low and serious, no doubt discussing what to do. She turned her head, feeling her happiness melt away, leaving an icy-cold dread in her heart.


	3. Capture

"Wake up," murmured a voice in Xiang's ear.

Slowly, Xiang opened her eyes, blinking a couple of times, and sat up groggily on her bed. She drew a hand across her eyes and scanned the cell swiftly. A few scientists stood before the door, their expressions apprehensive. Jinlong leaned against the wall where'd he slept last night, pointedly refusing the bed he'd been offered, his eyes narrowed distrustfully at the scientists.

Yueyin, who had woken Xiang, whispered to her, "The leader wants to see us again. He wants to hear our answer."

Her heart instantly sped up in panic as she remembered the situation they were in. Xiang clutched Yueyin's arm and whispered urgently, "What did you and Jinlong decide? They can't force us to serve them, can they?"

"I don't know," Yueyin murmured, glancing at the scientists warily. She picked up Jiaxing, who was still asleep, wrapped in her jacket. "But don't worry, Xiang. We'll be all right." A slight tremor in her voice betrayed her fear, and a feeling of ice trickled down Xiang's spine.

"Are you ready?" asked one of the scientists haltingly. They looked at each of the flock cautiously, knowing full well their hatred for the School.

"Yes." Jinlong stalked toward the door, brushing the scientists aside. His mouth was set into a firm, determined line. Yueyin followed him, the younger children trailing after her. Xiang could almost hear their heartbeats pounding wildly in unison.

"I'm scared," Fong whispered to her as the flock was escorted down the hall. "What will we do? Do you think they can hurt us?" His eyes were large and frightened, still a child's eyes.

"I—don't know," Xiang muttered, looking straight ahead. The sharp, medical scent of antiseptics stole into her nose, dizzying her mind even more than the ringing feeling of alarm coursing through her did. "But just trust Jinlong and Yueyin. They always make the right decisions."

The boss was waiting in his office. His expression carefully controlled, he swiveled his chair around to face the flock, who stood rigidly before his desk. The scientists assembled silently at the door, ensuring that the flock had no way out. Xiang clenched her teeth together, beginning to feel light-headed with anxiety and claustrophobia.

"So," began the leader. He paused, searching their faces. Finding no answer in them, he continued. "I hope you have thought upon our offer, and have your decision ready."

Jinlong glanced at the flock for their approval, and was met with their stares of trust and determination. He turned back to the boss and crossed his arms, his eyebrows drawing together into a defiant scowl.

"Yes, we've thought about it," he growled. "And our answer remains the same as the one we gave you last night."

The leader looked stunned. His jaw hung open, and it took him a few moments to compose himself. "Are you sure?" he stammered, scooting closer in his chair to the flock. "I won't make this offer again. You can live, or die. It's up to you."

Jinlong lifted his chin. "I'm fully aware it is up to me. It's time that _you _realized it too. Stop trying to sway us."

The leader's gaze flickered back and forth among the flock's faces. Xiang swallowed as his beady eyes passed over her and straightened her shoulders. Finally the boss stopped his perusal of the hybrids and shook his head.

"I don't understand," he said in genuine bewilderment. "Why don't you want to live?"

"How can you not understand?" Yueyin stepped forward to stand by Jinlong, her long dark hair brushing her shoulders. "You treat us like animals for our entire lives, you torture us without a thought to what we feel, and you dare to ask why we want to live? What life have you given us here?" She waved a hand to indicate the School. "This place has nothing for us."

The leader stared at her, speechless.

Xiang felt her heart swell with pride. She gazed toward Yueyin with admiration. Jinlong gave Yueyin a surprised look that softened to gratitude, and he took her hand gently in his.

"I won't fail you, Yueyin," he promised quietly. "You, or the flock."

"I know," was her soft reply. The air around them was charged with something intense and desperate and passionate, crackling with the strength of the emotions. Xiang watched them, puzzled. Something was happening between them, but she did not yet know, or understand.

The boss appeared to be thinking intently. A frown creasing his deeply lined face, he focused his attention on Jinlong. "You," he snapped. "Hybrid 105. You make all the decisions for your group, don't you?"

Where was he going with this? Xiang wondered. Jinlong returned the scientist's gaze steadily, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

"I knew it." The leader slapped his palm on the surface of his desk. He glared fixedly at the flock leader. "You _do _make all the decisions for your flock. They all listen to you. Obviously, they can't think for themselves."

Jinlong's hand tightened around Yueyin's. "They're not dim," he told him. "In fact, they're more intelligent than you, or the rest of your cruel scientist followers."

The leader's eyes wandered over to the row of scientists standing in the background guarding the door. He made a slight movement with his left hand.

Without warning, two of the scientists leaped forward, seizing Jinlong by the shoulders and jumping heavily on him, forcing him to the ground. Jinlong let out a shout of surprise and immediately snapped out his powerful wings, beating them wildly and fiercely. The scientists cried out in shock and fell to the ground, blinded by the flurry of feathers. A pair of glasses fell to the floor and shattered.

The pair of scientists, momentarily stunned, rose up again and leaped once more for Jinlong, but he leaped backwards onto the desk, gaining the advantage of a higher ground. His hand whipped forward through the air, striking both of them to the floor once more. The boss cowered in his chair, attempting to avoid Jinlong's fluttering wings.

Xiang wanted to scream, but it lodged halfway up her throat and stopped there. She could only stare, barely breathing, at the chaos that had destroyed the office in only the span of a few seconds. Swallowing, she gathered a panic-stricken Fong to her side.

Jinlong's face was frozen in a snarl of fury as he surveyed the wrecked room. He leaped down from the desk to face the pair of scientists who had tried to pin him down. They scrambled away, fear entering their expressions. "Leave us alone, you cowards," he spat.

The boss, who was quickly recovering from his earlier shock, motioned urgently to the other two scientists. Xiang screamed out a warning, but she wasn't quick enough. In a single swift movement, the scientists drew two black spheres from their pockets and threw them at Jinlong. He instantly shielded himself with his wings, but the spheres attached themselves to his feathers, expanding into an enormous black net that surrounded him completely. Yueyin flew to his side and tugged at the knotted black strings desperately, but it was of no avail.

In a fury, the crane-winged hybrid whirled around to face the lead scientist. "_Why did you do that, you pathetic human_?" she snarled, pure venom coursing through her voice.

For a moment, he quailed. Yueyin had never been seen, not even by the flock, this enraged. She stepped over the prostrate bodies of the first two scientists and rounded on the leader.

"Tell me!" she demanded, her voice as cold as ice. Her face was very pale—from hate or from terror?

"I had to!" blustered the leader. "Hybrid 105 clearly controls your group. If he makes a decision, the rest of you will follow, whether you have your own opinions or not. He's forbidding you from thinking about your own feelings."

"Be silent!" Yueyin's eyes blazed with rage. "Don't you think we know what you're going on about? You just want us alive, so we can fulfill your hideous dreams! Well, we don't want to! Capturing Jinlong doesn't make a difference to what we want. We die, we die together!"

"You don't have any choice!" cried the scientist. "You _have _to live! That is what you were created for!"

"You can't control us," Yueyin shot back. "You gave us a choice, and we chose to die. Now deal with it!"

The leader placed his head heavily in his hands for a minute, then slowly glanced up. The stricken look on his perspiring face was almost pleading. "I need at least one of you to live," he muttered to himself. "Just one of you, so the Director can see my efforts were of use. But if you continue on like this, with someone leading you, you will never agree to my demands. Something must be done."

He straightened and lifted his voice.

"Terminate Hybrid 105!"


	4. The First to Fall

"Yueyin?" Xiang whispered, stretching out a hand. "Yueyin, are you okay?"

There was no answer.

Xiang fell silent, trembling, and withdrew her hand.

The flock, minus Jinlong, had been thrown back into their cell after the leader had declared Jinlong's termination. Xiang shut her eyes tight and huddled into a ball, feeling tears of misery pour down her face as she remembered.

There had been a tense, frightened silence after the boss had said those terrible words. Xiang had stared at him in horror, unable to speak. It was as if her world had been shattered, the foundations of her life toppled and shaken to its roots. Without her family, her existence held no meaning for her. The floor had tilted, unsteady, beneath her feet, and she had felt a sickly nausea spread through her mind and body.

Yueyin had gone very white. She stared at the leader, only just suppressing the tears that were welling in her eyes. Then, in a sudden violent movement, she had launched herself at the leader, snapping out her beautiful white wings, her hands aimed for his throat. Papers fluttered through the air to the floor, books thudded against the carpet, and the swivel chair overturned and crashed, the boss groping wildly to get away as Yueyin raked her nails viciously down his face. Her face was contorted in a mindless savage ferocity.

Xiang had watched through a haze of numbness. It was completely surreal. She felt as if the world had lied to her, and everything was utterly wrong. Yueyin was the most sensitive and kind person in the flock. To see her like this, as if her heart had been destroyed and her sweet nature overtaken by this violent one, almost broke Xiang's own heart.

The scientists had rushed forward and attempted to pry Yueyin away from the boss, but she held them all off, lashing out furiously in a storm of anger. White feathers spun through the air in the chaos, landing delicately on the floor. The scientists, blinded by her furiously beating wings, cried out and tried to protect their faces. Yueyin dealt the leader a heavy blow with the back of her hand as the scientists were distracted, drawing blood.

"What have you done?" she had screamed. "What have you done?"

Suddenly, she sank to the floor as if her energy had been drained from her, and stared blankly at her bloodstained hands. Her snow-white wings were speckled with scarlet blood, and she drew them against her shoulders as if to protect herself. The expression in her eyes was distant. Xiang rushed to her, horrified. Had Yueyin gone insane?

The scientists rushed to assist the boss as he rose, panting, his face contorted in pain, from behind the desk. Blood trickled from the scratches on his face, and his nose was bleeding heavily, perhaps broken. Wincing, he pressed a white handkerchief to his nose and pointed a finger at the flock.

"You'll thank me for this," he gasped. "Hybrid 105 made decisions for you, without ever considering what you might feel. Do you really want to die? You don't have to. We're giving you a precious chance that no other hybrid will have, and you're simply throwing it out of the window because you want to listen to your leader. With him out of the way, I'm sure you will be able to see the kindness in our offer."

He sat down in his chair and pressed a button on the desk. Instantly a group of scientists flung open the door and rushed into the office. Several of them attended to the leader's injuries, while the rest surrounded Jinlong's net, lifted it without difficulty, and made for the door. It hurt Xiang's heart to see their brave leader captured like he was no more than an animal.

As Jinlong's net passed Yueyin, his eyes darted to hers at once. Yueyin's breath caught in her throat, and she stretched out a shaking hand to him. However, the net passed right by her and continued out of the door, borne by the scientists. Jinlong's eyes never left the flock.

_I'm sorry_, his eyes seemed to say.

The remaining scientists finished bandaging the leader up and now headed toward the flock. They had been hustled back along the hallway to their cell and locked in once more.

Yueyin had dropped to the cold metal floor and tucked her wings around her, as if to ward off all the danger and despair in the world. Fong was crying silently, the tears soaking the mattress. Jiaxing, looking around the room, detected the loss of Jinlong and toddled over to Xiang, beating her leg persistently. "Where's Jinlong?" she demanded. "Where's Jinlong?"

Xiang stared at her. The tears brimmed, and then flowed. Xiang dropped to her knees and wept in anguish as if all the happiness in the world had been leeched out of it. She pulled herself onto the bed beside Fong and wrapped her arms around him, and he hid his face in her shoulder, heaving with sobs.

They cried together in desperation, knowing that nothing in this world would fill the hole left in their hearts by Jinlong's death, grieving for the loss of their best friend, their brother, their parent. In this cruel world, where adults were allowed to perform dangerous experiments on young children, the flock had only each other. What did they live for, if even that was taken away, too?

As for Yueyin, she sat alone on the floor, fighting to hold back the tears, hands clasped together in a mourning position.

------

Jinlong lay absolutely still in the black net as the scientists rushed him down a hallway, then another. They were all blank, meaningless, and white, just like his life right now.

_I'm sorry, Yueyin, Xiang, Fong, Jiaxing_, he thought. _I'll never see you again_.

They were his family, and he had sworn himself to protect them from everything. He hadn't counted on dying, though. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the raw ache in his heart. Without them, he was broken. He thought of Yueyin and instantly closed his eyes against the pain, allowing himself to shed only one bitter tear.

Grimly he wondered what sort of torture instrument they would use to kill him. In this laboratory, anything was possible. He swallowed and braced himself, repeating words in his mind he had spoken to himself many times before: _Be brave, be brave_.

At last the scientists stopped at a door halfway down one of the hallways. Hands shaking, one of them inserted a key into the lock and swung the door open. Wordlessly, he waved the others on through.

They were in another lab chamber, the ceiling high and made of panels of glass. Worktables piled with various pieces of lab equipment filled the room, as well as some dangerous-looking machinery in the back. Dim light shone through the glass, making the cold linoleum floor gleam.

The boss stood at the end of the room, his face swathed in bloodied bandages. It looked very painful, judging by the way his face seemed to be fixed in a permanent wince. Jinlong allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction. _Good for you, Yueyin._

The scientists stepped forward, dropping Jinlong to the floor at their feet. "Boss, we have brought Hybrid 105 for termination, as you ordered," one of them announced, looking at the floor.

The boss turned toward them. Jinlong felt himself tense, as he always did around the sight of scientists, especially him. Through the netting, he narrowed his eyes into a glare.

_This is it, _he thought.

"What a shame." The leader sighed and strode toward them, something akin to genuine regret in his voice. "You were always my strongest hybrid. You were a success, and a natural leader. And you were so close to defeating the strength levels of the American flock."

Jinlong, from his position in the net on the floor, glared up at the leader and didn't say a word.

"But of course, you had to go on and be all noble and heroic and tell your flock that they should die, rather than serve us," the leader sighed. "Whatever gave you _that _idea, Hybrid 105? Shouldn't protecting your life and the lives of the ones you care for be your top priority? Instead, you've condemned them all to death, as well as yourself. What a pity."

_He's trying to make me feel guilty_, Jinlong realized. He continued to stare fiercely at the leader, without any change of expression. He knew how much his defiance unnerved the boss. Sure enough, he turned away.

"Oh well. All good things must come to an end, I suppose," the leader said casually.

Jinlong could restrain himself no longer. "All good things must come to an end?" he spat. "Is that how you justify killing children? That's pathetic!"

"Very bold," the boss observed. Jinlong clenched his fists, hating the way the leader spoke, as if he were merely an object in a display case. "I can see why the others followed you. But you are merely an obstacle in my plan. You must be removed."

He held up his hand, and Jinlong saw, with a jolt of foreboding, a small black remote with a single red button on it.

"This is how we terminate our hybrids," the leader announced, every word dragged out reluctantly. "When we create our hybrids, we also insert a small chip into their bodies. It won't hinder their growth, or have any impact on their health, but when activated, it will cut off all signals to the brain, thus rendering you unable to function and therefore, dead."

Jinlong stared at him, his face like stone. Inside, however, his emotions writhed in a sickening, terrified revulsion. He had had a chip inside him for all this time, and he had never known. This was another display of the cruelty of man.

The boss put his thumb on the button, and Jinlong stiffened. He had no idea what dying felt like, but hopefully, this would be swift.

The thumb tensed, ready to push the button down, but suddenly the leader stopped and shook his head. "This really is a shame," he said. "Hybrid 105, think of all the talent you are wasting. Just say yes, and you and your family will live here and be together. You don't have to part from them." His voice was honey, oozing persuasion.

Jinlong thought of Yueyin. How could he bear to part from her? He swallowed, thinking of all the words he'd wanted to say to her but never would say. Then he thought of her exhausted face at the end of a day of tests, often bearing the bruises of the scientists' cruelty. How could he sentence her to a life of _that_?

He gritted his teeth. "Never, you freak," he snarled.

The leader sighed. "Very well," he said, and pushed the button.

The actions unfolded in a swift second. Jinlong suddenly felt something snapping inside him, and, to his horror, his senses and emotions slipping away from him into a fog where he could not follow. His body was no longer his own. His head lurched to the left, snapping forward. Then he was still, motionless, staring vacantly at the floor.

------

Xiang awoke. Her mouth felt dry and salty with the bitter taste of the tears she'd shed from the night before, and her eyes swollen and weary. She rubbed her face, fatigue latching itself to her limbs.

Beside her, Fong still slept on the mattress with baby Jiaxing. His cheeks were streaked with the trails of tears, and his shoulders were hunched protectively. Xiang, feeling a stir of pity and love for her younger brother, reached out and combed her fingers through his feathery hair, remembering how Yueyin would often do that for her.

Yueyin.

Xiang turned to see her sitting in the middle of the floor, unmoving, her wings still wrapped around her. Her heart ached again. _Poor Yueyin. _

She slipped off the bed and crawled across the floor to her. "Yueyin?" she whispered. "Are you awake?"

Slowly, the white wings lowered. Xiang gazed at Yueyin's face, eyes red-rimmed and dull with grief. "I never slept," she whispered. "I couldn't." She put a hand to her heart, and Xiang knew she felt the raw sorrow inside her too. Jinlong's absence was like a missing arm or leg that could never be replaced.

Yueyin lowered her head. "I thought I felt him," she murmured. "I felt his spirit, the moment his spirit left his body. But he'll never be here with me again."

Xiang reached out a hand and touched her cold arm. "You love him, don't you?" she asked quietly.

Yueyin stared at her, her eyes a swirl of emotion: despair, hate, anger, loss, mourning, love, passion, anguish. Xiang knew her answer before she whispered brokenly: "Yes."

Xiang put her arms around Yueyin, and it was a few moments before Yueyin responded, hugging her fiercely and tightly. "I'm sorry for last night," she murmured, rocking Xiang back and forth like she was a child again. "I wasn't myself. I think I frightened you. I was just—so . . . sad." A sob caught in her throat, but Xiang felt her suppress it, forcing it down. "They aren't going to take any of you away anymore. They can't do this to us."

Her words were more to comfort her, Xiang realized. There was little truth in the hopeful sentences, but she shut her eyes and wished with all her might that they would be true. Xiang hugged Yueyin as tight as she could.

_This could be the last time we'll ever see each other again_.

An hour later, they heard the lock click and the door creaked slowly open. Five scientists stepped warily into the room. Their faces were cold and unsympathetic as they looked down at Xiang and Yueyin.

"What is your answer?" said a lady scientist, her voice harsh. Every one of them looked edgy, each anticipating the flock's answer.

Yueyin climbed to her feet and returned a steely glare. She was acting more like the Yueyin Xiang knew. "No," she answered firmly.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and the scientists murmured to each other. Clearly they hadn't expected the flock to refuse their offer again. Yueyin tightened her hold around Xiang's hand. "Don't worry," she murmured.

Xiang nodded, but her attention was focused on the scientists' conversation. What were they saying? "You know what to do," she heard the lady scientist mutter to the rest.

Suddenly, in a blur of white coats, they sprang forward as one, plowing heavily into Yueyin and forcing her against the cold floor. Yueyin lashed out as best she could, but they held her well pinned against the floor. Twisting her arms behind her back and binding her wings against her shoulders, they shoved her toward the door as Xiang watched in horror, a silent scream locking in her chest.

Everything was utterly wrong.

"We'll wait for your answer until tomorrow," spat the lady scientist, and they left the cell.

Finding a voice at last, Xiang sprang to her feet and screamed, "_No! Yueyin_!"

Her voice cracked with terror and fear, echoing around the cell. She was still screaming as they stepped through the doorway; still screaming as they hauled Yueyin into the hallway; still screaming, her voice ringing in her ears, as she heard the door click and crash shut with a final, devastating _clang_.

________________________________________________________________________

Hi everyone! I'm getting ready to go to Ocean City right now, so there won't be any new updates for a while. Ugh…I got up at six to finish this chapter and now I feel a little exhausted.

**And um, please review. It makes Nighty very happy if you review. If you do, I'll try to make the next chapter even longer and more exciting than this one! Please? **


	5. Flying Free

Hey everyone, it's Nighty! I'm back! I had an awesome vacation, but all of you just made my day when I came home and read your kind, thoughtful reviews. Thank you so much for taking the time to review. I was so happy.

**So here's the next chapter. Yay! I hope you enjoy it.**

------

Far worse than the sorrow that follows the death of any relative, is the anguish that ensues after the death of one's mother.

This was certainly the case with Xiang. Yueyin had been a mother to her as no one had, a mother to all the flock, and she would never be replaced. She had comforted Xiang, hugged her, tenderly soothed her after a harsh day of experiments, told her stories, nurtured her with love and care. She had given her the light of hope in a place where terror, death, and desolation reigned. And now she was gone.

Xiang's tears had ceased only long after they had taken Yueyin away. She crouched on the cold floor now, dry-eyed, but her heart was bleeding. There was so much pain, inside. Her heart tightened within her chest, a complicated knot of sorrow and hate and agony with love at its core, throbbing achingly. Her mind was numb with fear and grieving, her pulse pounding in her ears.

_This can't be real. This is all a cruel dream. I'll wake up, and Yueyin will be here. With me. _

Fresh pain bloomed inside her, tinged with sharp bitterness. These beautiful words were no more than an excuse invented in the hope that nothing was real. They were just as insubstantial as Yueyin's hope that no more of the flock would be captured. She pressed a cold hand against her chest, aching so much that she could almost feel blood dripping through her fingers.

If she could only hear Yueyin's voice one more time, or throw her arms around her and feel safe in her motherly embrace. . . .

_I need her so much! _

She lowered her head in defeat. The scientists were trying to break her, that was clear, twisting and tearing her heart apart, trampling on it as if it were a thing of little value, until she finally bent and submitted to their wishes. As if they hadn't damaged her enough already.

She lifted an arm and gazed numbly at it, where a pattern of bruises marked it starkly, the memory of last week's cruel experiments, where they had forced her and the flock to pull enormous blocks more than twice their weight. In her mind, she remembered the burning feeling of the ropes cutting mercilessly into her skin, and the agonized expressions of her flock. But Yueyin had comforted her afterward, and gently dabbed her sleeve at Xiang's bleeding wounds.

Hot tears pricked her eyes. Every memory of her laughter, or her warm smile, sent a jolt of pain coursing through her.

This was far, far worse than any experiment that the scientists had ever tried on her. This time, there was no Yueyin or Jinlong to ease her fears, or to chase away her dark nightmares.

She had never felt so utterly, completely alone.

_At least where she is now, she's with Jinlong, _she thought. _He loved her, too._

Fong and Jiaxing, exhausted by the ordeals of the previous day, were still asleep, blissfully unaware of Yueyin's disappearance. In dreams, Xiang reflected, you could forget all about the outside world, forget about what was going on in reality. She felt a pang of envy, as well as regret, that when they awoke, they too would have to bear the suffering Xiang had felt because of Yueyin's death.

Moments ticked past. Fong stirred on the mattress, raised himself up, and rubbed his wrist across his eyes. Xiang, watching his face, saw a seriousness flood over his face, washing away the innocent, peaceful expression of sleep. He looked like a much older child, weighted down by the burdens he had been forced to carry.

"Xiang," he began sleepily, then looked around, taking the cell room in at a closer glance. His eyes widened. "Where's Yueyin?"

Xiang did not have to say a word; the tears brimming in her eyes and her quivering lips alone told him everything. He leaped up from the bed. "_No!_" he screamed, his voice shaking with sobs. "It can't be true! It can't!"

Xiang pulled him to her side and tried to console him. He buried his face in her shirt and cried as if his heart was broken, his shoulders shuddering violently. Jiaxing was woken, and once she understood was going on, she too cried.

Xiang looked down at the remaining members of her flock with a deep, heavy feeling in her heart. Two of her flock members were dead, gone, never to return. The ones left behind were weeping in sorrow and heartache. What kind of world was this, where children were allowed to be tortured, their only family stripped deliberately away from them?

Xiang's lip quivered for a moment. Then she, too, broke down and cried.

------

As the last members of the flock mourned, the boss of the School was assembling a council. At his wits' end, he paced back and forth across the floor of the conference hall, tearing his thinning hair out in deranged frustration.

"How can this be?" he cried. He stopped and faced his fellow scientists, his eyes wild. "We have offered them a chance to live, we have destroyed their leader—and _today, _we killed Hybrid 112!"

He resumed his pacing, his breathing fast and shallow.

"If this keeps up, we'll be destroying our most valuable hybrids! Hybrid 105 was so very, very close to defeating the other flock's speed, endurance, and strength records! Hybrid 112 was about to defeat their flexibility and balance levels! But they both chose to die, and what am I to do?"

His scientists watched him in a similar state of agitation. The Director already held the Chinese School in quite a low regard. Beating the American flock was supposed to be their triumph, a victory that would raise themselves higher in the eyes of the Director. But with the new termination law, they were bound to sink even lower in status. Perhaps their School would even be canceled, if they won no support from the Director. They were in a very dangerous state.

"W-Well, we did send a few of our scientists out to recruit the American flock," ventured one lady scientist, trying to soothe the boss. "They must have collected some very valuable data that will be of use to us. Furthermore, perhaps the flock has agreed to their demands. Do you remember, Boss? We sent that group of scientists to hire the American flock as both military weapons, and teachers for our own flock. We might have promise after all."

The boss shook his head wearily, as if all his troubles were annoying flies constantly bothering and worrying him. "I received a message this morning. The American flock is not cooperating with the group we sent out, and at this point the idea of raising our status seems futile." His voice rose in agitation. "And our own flock is not cooperating! They refuse all our offers! They want to die! How can we deal with this? We must persuade them or else we are all done for!"

The line of scientists seated at the table were silent, all thinking furiously.

"Well, if killing their leaders doesn't work . . ." wondered one scientist hesitantly.

The lady scientist who had spoken before rose from her seat. "They have no leaders now. All their lives, their leaders had been setting an example for them: to protect the weaker and younger. What a foolish notion." She sniffed disdainfully and then continued. "The ones left now may be thinking of such a thing. They may think they must set an example for those who are younger. Perhaps we should terminate the youngest among them. We may get results."

The boss sighed and considered, combing his fat fingers through his hair. Heavy bags hung around his beady eyes. All the scientists in the School had been shaken by the announcement of the hybrid termination law. If they did not convince the Director their School was worth keeping, they would be in very bad trouble indeed.

Finally, he nodded and lifted his head wearily. "Do as you must. Bring Hybrid 131 here and terminate her."

------

Xiang woke in the middle of the night. She had found no peace in her dreams, and her chest still hurt from heartache. What had woken her? She wasn't certain, but she thought she had heard the door of the cell closing.

She concentrated, listening as hard as she could in the silent darkness. From the mattress next to hers, she heard the sound of a person breathing. Fong.

Jiaxing?

Her eyes went wide in the darkness, and she scrambled forward, groping at the mattress for the place where the youngest member of the flock had been sleeping. It was cold, and Xiang's jacket, which Jiaxing had been using as a coverlet, had been tossed onto the floor.

Xiang's pulse speeded up until it roared in her ears. In a frantic, rushing haze, she searched underneath the bed, on the other beds, the floor, every corner of the cell. All the while, she clung to the desperate hope that Jiaxing wasn't really gone, she had just crawled out of bed to play.

It was as meaningless and useless a hope as the one she'd had before.

Finally, she sank down onto the floor and admitted defeat.

------

The next night, they took Fong away.

Xiang was waiting for them when they came for her. She knelt in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped in her lap, her wings folded and tucked around her. Her eyes were dry. She had cried her last tear and said her goodbyes to Fong the previous day, knowing what would undeniably happen.

_Wait for me_, she thought as she listened to the sound of footsteps approaching the cell door. _Wait for me, my dead flock. I'll join you very soon. _

She swallowed. _I hope it doesn't hurt._

The lock clicked as it was unlocked and the door was pushed open. Xiang kept her eyes on the floor, even as they entered the cell and stood before her. _Be brave, be brave_, she repeated to herself. That was what Jinlong would say at a time like this.

The air was charged with a powerful tension, gripping the atmosphere in steely bonds. Xiang was the last flock member left. If she refused, the School would be destroyed. The scientists waited.

Then Xiang spoke.

"No."

The word dropped through the air as clearly as a warning bell, as heavy as a stone falling through water. Xiang felt it leave her mouth, and with it an invisible weight settled on her shoulders, yet another burden slipped off her back at the same moment.

There was an audible, collective gasp. Many of the scientists clutched one another, looking frightened and anxious. A scientist in front stepped toward Xiang, his hand held slightly out, as if he wanted to push the single word back into her mouth as if she'd never said it. A female scientist held him back, shaking her head once: _There's nothing we can do._

Silently, Xiang was escorted down the corridor. The murmurings of the scientists behind her were blurred out by the sound of her shoes against the floor, like a death drum pounding out a slow, rhythmic beat, and the pulsing of her own heartbeat, soon to be extinguished, as was her life.

In the enormous lab room where the rest of the flock had been terminated, the scientists brought Xiang forward to face the leader. He turned around at the sound of footsteps—and his face blanched in horror.

"She chose to die," one of the scientists said quietly.

The boss opened his mouth, as if to speak, but only silent incredulity left it. He looked back and forth among the scientists, as if begging for some explanation, or perhaps a confirmation of his hope that it was merely a joke. But as the silence stretched on, and no scientist offered up any words, it became as clear as crystal to each one of them that Xiang's death was imminent.

The leader swallowed with difficulty. "Very well," he said, his shaking voice betraying his shock. He shook his head, as if to clear his mind. Then, slowly, he slid his hand into his coat pocket and withdrew a small black remote.

Xiang felt herself tense, every muscle locking tight in preparation for the instinctive "fight or flight."

_Calm, _she told her mind. _Everything will be over soon._

Then words permeated her consciousness. The boss was speaking to her, in a tone of deep regret and desperation.

"What made you do this?" he was saying. "I would have thought, since we offered you so much, we took away the influences that would have impacted your decision negatively . . ."

He fell silent. Xiang lifted her head and glared at him, her wide dark brown eyes meeting his tiny, worry-creased ones.

"You don't know what loyalty is," she said, fighting to keep her voice quiet and level. She paused, making sure he had heard her, and went on again. "My flock _died _so that I would not have to suffer a life of pain and misery. They died for a reason. Do you think I would betray them?"

She gazed around her, at the slack-jawed scientists, and the dumbstruck boss, at the tables and the enormous glass windows of the lab. The light from the panes of glass reflected against the shining linoleum floor, distant and unfocused. She thought she saw the faces of her flock, weaving in and out of the golden dust motes, watching her silently.

_Wait for me. Just a little while longer._

"They died for me," she repeated, her voice strengthening in tone and volume. "They're all somewhere else now, where people go when they die. They're waiting for me to join them, so we can all be together again. There's nothing for me here. _I hate this place_!"

Her shout echoed suddenly around the laboratory in the silence, stunning even herself. She stood there for a moment, breathing quickly, relishing the shocked expression on the boss's face. She had spoken these words before only to Yueyin, and to herself. She had always dreamed of letting loose the anger knotted within her, to lash and spit out every furious emotion in her mind and heart. Consequences would follow such behavior, though, and she'd had to worry about the prospect of a severe punishment.

But if she was going to die . . .

A sudden wild recklessness, powered by years of pent-up rage and hate, gripped her. She snapped open her teal-gray wings and screamed to the ceiling, her newfound wild power coursing through her veins. A dark joy lanced her mind, and she felt the savagery of an animal that had overtaken Yueyin's mind. She understood how it felt to throw aside everything in wild abandonment, to focus only on her feelings and nothing else. Her anger was like venom, burning and poisonous, sinking sharp fangs into anything that came too close to her. She screamed again and again, pouring out every word that she'd always wanted to say but had been forbidden to.

She was going to die. Whatever she did now, none of it mattered.

The scientists brought Xiang down, still shrieking and lashing out at them, pinning her to the floor and crouching heavily against her limbs so she was unable to move. Through the tears of pain and fury that blurred her eyes, Xiang made out the figure of the boss stepping toward her, a look of displeasure and regret on his deeply creased face.

"She's insane," he said quietly to one of the scientists, who was clutching Xiang's right arm. "She's of no use to us anyway. In this state, she might even bring more disgrace to the School. We had better terminate her quickly."

_Go on, kill me. I don't care! I don't care!_

Her thoughts were no longer her own, swirling around in a fierce dance, caught up in the feral madness that lingered still in her mind. A slight joy stirred in Xiang's heart. If she was going to die now, she would see her flock again, very soon.

_Yueyin, Jinlong, Jiaxing, Fong, wait for me! We'll be beyond fear, beyond pain, someplace where no one from the School will be able to torture us again! We'll be alive in another place, and we'll have each other! _

The boss's thumb hovered over the button on the remote. Xiang's body tensed as she prepared to die.

And the thumb stayed there, still hanging over the button. The boss looked up quizzically, then glanced sharply at the rest of the scientists. "Did you hear that?" he whispered, alarmed.

Xiang listened, her mind momentarily diverted. The sound hit her ears in an instant—the roar of hundreds of people's voices, screaming in a single, unified voice, and the pound of thousands of feet on stone. The incredible noise assailed her sensitive ears like battering blows, one after another.

The scientists looked around at each other, at a loss to explain it away. The boss appeared to be uncertain and frightened, and his grip loosened on the remote. As they all listened tensely, the noise swelled in volume, growing to a furious roar that filled the entire laboratory with its sound.

The scientists rushed to the window. Xiang, struggling to sit upright now that they had forgotten her, could make out the silhouette of a dark, massive form of crowds of people thronged outside the enormous lab window.

"W-what is the meaning of this?" stammered the boss.

Suddenly, one of the scientists burst through the door, smashing it against the wall in panic. Her eyes were wide with fear. "Boss! There are thousands of people outside the gates, screaming and yelling! I think it's a riot! They're about to tear down the gates!"

At that moment, a horrible screeching split the air like a scythe. Outside the gates of the School, an enormous garbage truck was heaving itself against the gates. The garbage dump owner's son was at the wheel, urging it against the metal. There was another keen shriek of twisting metal, and then, with a shattering crash, the gates were ripped from their hinges and hurled against the building. Xiang and the scientists winced as they felt the impact of the metal hinges against the window, splintering the glass.

Roaring, hordes of people poured through, waving their arms and thundering across the small courtyard toward the building. The garbage truck followed them, more people perched on it, all screaming in fury. As the crowds rapidly approached, their faces became more visible to the scientists.

The boss stared at them in astonishment. "What is the meaning of this? These rioters are teenagers!"

Outside, an object was flung through the air, crashing through the enormous window of the laboratory. Shards of glass scattered across the floor as the object landed heavily on the linoleum, having destroyed several of the windowpanes. It was a coffeepot.

Now that the window was partially shattered, the voices of the teenagers were more audible. One girl, bobbing around the window, screamed, "_Ni men do shih hwi txin! _You are all evil people!" before more teenagers crowded forward, taking her place.

Xiang, still sitting on the floor, was in a daze. Her mind spun numbly, trying to work out the situation. What was happening? Was she dreaming? Were these teenagers angels from heaven, come to punish the scientists for their misdeeds?

The voices began to strengthen into a unified chant. The teenagers raised signs above their heads, screaming in a thousand voices:

"_Stop genetic experiments! Stop genetic experiments! Free the mutants! Free the mutants_!"

Xiang was just as stunned as the scientists were. She listened, her mind dull with confusion, as the voices continued to roar out in their united chant.

"How?" whimpered one scientist, cowering against the floor. "The government supports us! We told them it was a research facility!"

More objects crashed through the glass, sending more shards scattered across the floor. The scientists did not make a move. However these teenagers had discovered their deepest secrets, they did not know, but one thing was certain: they were absolutely and completely destroyed.

Another roar started up from the back of the crowd: "_Fang! Fang! Fang!"_

The scientists started at this, gazing at each other in alarm, and the boss said in a kind of horrified whisper: "That's the name of one of the mutants in the American flock!"

The sound of a grumbling engine pierced the early-morning air outside, and the crowds scattered out of the way as the trash truck lurched forward, heaving from side to side, and then made a full, determined roll toward the building.

_Crash!_

The sharp, keen sound of breaking glass split Xiang's ears. She instinctively covered her face and body with her wings as the truck roared into the laboratory, spewing glass everywhere. Some of the scientists cried out in pain as the flying shards pierced them. The truck backed away from the gaping hole that was now situated in the wall of glass, and quickly teenagers took its place, pouring through the hole all at once, screaming and waving weapons.

The scientists called to one another in fear, shouting, "_Qwi thao! _Quick, run!" The rioters chased after them through the lab, ripping up the equipment in their fury, flinging records of mutants to the floor and stamping viciously on it. In the corner, several of them set to work destroying one of the torture instruments used to perform tests on the mutants. They streamed through the window, more and more of them, like a flood, rushing past Xiang, who still sat quietly on the floor, going quite unnoticed.

In her huddle of feathers, she heard the teenagers strike up a chant once more: "_You can't do this to children anymore! You're evil! Stop these experiments! Stop these experiments!"_

The words clicked in her mind. She stood up, quite suddenly, and stretched out her wings, rejoicing at the wonderful feeling of it. Raising her wings above her head, she took a running leap before performing a powerful downstroke, rising into the air. She soared above the ruined laboratory, her head brushing the ceiling. The sweet sensation of flying filled her mind with a wild joy, and she circled above the lab again, not caring who saw her.

Many of the teenagers paused as Xiang flew overhead, and more than a few gasped out and pointed. "Look! A mutant! Like Fang!"

Who was Fang? Xiang didn't know, and she didn't care. She was flying, and the School was being destroyed. No one would torture her again. Air rushed past her cheeks, whipped up by her teal-gray wings, and a slight smile crept across her face.

The boss stood in the middle of the floor, gazing blankly around him as the School was destroyed, his mouth sagging open. There was a numb expression on his face, as if the fact that he and all his scientists were ruined was taking a while to process through to his mind. Xiang swooped down toward him, and before he had a chance to react, she snatched the remote from his limp hand, soared upward again, and dropped it into the hands of a dumbstruck teenager.

"Destroy that," she told him, and then she turned and flew away, heading straight as an arrow for the hole in the wall. She tightened her shoulders inward and tucked her wings in before shooting through the gap, feeling the glass just barely miss her skin. The teenagers, still pouring into the lab, pointed and shouted out again in amazement.

The cool morning air hit her face like a gust of wind, and she breathed deeply in, feeling the sweetness of the grass and wind all at once. The tight, stressed emotions she had been suffering all her life slipped off her body, and a wide, airy feeling settled in her heart. She was free now, free of the School, free!

She beat her wings again, pushing her onward through the sky. Soaring higher, she looked down and saw the gray rooftops of buildings. It was a wonderful sensation, to be flying as free as a bird released from the cage. She breathed in again, inviting in the cold air.

But as she soared through the brightening sky, a faint drop of sorrow pierced through her lightheartedness, and she thought again of her dead flock. A tear welled at the base of her eye.

_I'm happy and free now, but I wish I could be with you too. _

------

**Yay! Xiang finally escaped! Who knew it was all thanks to Fang's blog? **

**And, just a fun fact about the names of the Chinese flock: I actually didn't look them up. I named the flock after people in my family, with the exception of Fong and Xiang, whose names were taken from Chinese words I thought of that are bird-related. For instance, my baby sister's name is Jiaxing. And boy, is she the heart of the family. . . .**

**Please review!**


	6. Outsider

The sky was a clear, pale blue, arcing over her head. The city was waking up—Xiang could see the heads of people bobbing in the streets below as they headed toward their jobs, just as they did every day. The air was beginning to fill with the chatter of Chinese speech, breaking the peaceful silence of morning.

Xiang sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees, drawn up to her chest. The wind teased her dark hair, whipping it loose from the pigtails she usually wore it in. She sat atop the roof of a tall business building, looking down on the city below her, her wings held out half-open.

The previous hours, the joy of flying free had opened her heart and filled it with happiness, but now, as the city gradually awakened, she returned to her senses. She couldn't stay here, that was certain; someone would see her. She'd have to hide from people, and work out some way of obtaining food and shelter and clothes, and basically live like a criminal.

Still, it was better than the life she had left. At least, out here, she could fly, and there were no scientists shrieking at her, or evil machines and instruments to torture her. Thanks to the riot that had unexpectedly freed her that morning, she was no longer a captive of the School. She closed her eyes, letting the wind glide past her, wafting away the horrible memories of her past life, leaving an empty slate for her to start anew, like water washing away grime.

She stood up on the gravel rooftop, suddenly aware as she did so of how solitary she was. She was a lonely figure, all by herself, separated from her flock. What did a bird do when its flock was gone? she wondered. Her eyes, swollen from the tears she'd shed, nearly welled anew. If Yueyin or Jinlong were here, they'd reassure her and comfort her, and protect her from anything that would hurt her. Fong would make her laugh, and she would look after Jiaxing, which would make her feel like an older sister. With them she was Xiang, the loved member of a family. With them, she was whole.

She looked around her at the empty sky and vacant rooftop, shivering slightly. If her flock were here, she would be able to rely on them, knowing she was safe and protected. But from now on, she would have only herself to rely on.

_Can you deal with that, Xiang?_

She could try. Her survival depended on it.

She raised her arms above her head in a stretch and extended her wings fully, feeling them slide out of the wing slits in the back of her uniform. She could devise a plan later for her future, but for now she needed to eat something. Her stomach ached in starvation. Perhaps a trash can would yield the food she so desperately needed.

Taking a running start, Xiang stroked her wings and rose high into the air, feeling her feet leave the firm stability of the rooftop. Beating her wings rapidly, she turned and soared above the buildings, her eyes scanning the streets below. Pulling in her wings sharply and then spreading them once more, she dropped down into a side alley. There were a few trash bins standing outside the back door of a restaurant. She raced over and searched through them, sifting through the trash to find scraps of food that were still edible. She sat down on the cold stone ground and ate rapidly, praying that no one would discover her.

She had barely enough time to finish her paltry meal before the restaurant's back door opened and a man in an apron stepped outside, lugging bags of garbage. Xiang quickly dropped down behind a trash can. With a fast-beating heart she watched as the man dumped his bags inside another can, and returned to the restaurant. Once she was sure the coast was clear, she stood up once more and flew onto the roof.

She stumbled a couple of steps as she landed on the gravel. Breathing fast from panic, she sank down and closed her eyes. She had to think.

It was obvious that it was extremely inconvenient to have to run around in hiding, filling her stomach with only the meager bits she found in trash cans, always worrying about who saw her and what would happen if they caught her. Would she be taken to another School? The thought was frightening. She needed to find a permanent place she could call home, a place she could hide out and use for a living space. Perhaps an empty warehouse?

Her search proved futile, however. By early evening, she admitted defeat. She had checked the city for any hidden places she could live in, but they were either sold, too easily noticeable, or too ruined to be lived in.

She spent the rest of the day strolling along the coast, where the sea lapped just outside the city. Other Chinese people streamed to the right and left of her, not taking any notice of her, just going about their usual activities. Xiang liked this feeling of being unnoticed, with everyone assuming she was just another girl, the same as them. It was certainly preferable to being scrutinized by evil scientists.

As she neared the port, she saw enormous red-and-white cargo ships being loaded up. She quickened her pace; she had never seen a ship before. As she drew near the port, she heard one of the men shout to another: "Hey, where is this cargo headed to?"

"California, in America," came the reply.

Xiang's dark eyes widened.

_California, in America. Where the American flock is! _

She scanned the crates and shipments of supplies. They were stamped with the name of their destination: _Jia Zhou, Mei Gwao. _California, America. Following this were the names of the city and the building, and such, but Xiang saw only the four characters. These boxes were definitely exports to America.

She swallowed, her heart beginning to beat faster. Yes, wasn't the American flock in California? According to what the scientists at the School had told her, they were being experimented on by the School in California. Perhaps they hated the School just as much as Xiang and her flock did, and they wanted to escape.

What was the girl's name? Maximum Ride. And she and her flock were all bird-human hybrids, just like Xiang.

Xiang halted completely, her eyes staring unseeingly at the ground as people continued to rush past her. In her mind, a plan began to well. Perhaps, perhaps . . . _she _would find the American flock. Perhaps she would try to release them from the School, and together all of them would hide away someplace where nothing would ever be able to hurt them again.

And she would never be lonely again.

She admitted it; she was lost without her flock. The feel of a family was too close to her heart to be forgotten. If the American flock was going to be terminated, they must have lost some of their loved ones, too. Mutants were different from other people, glaring outsiders to this world of humans. If they were going to be hunted and pursued and tortured all their lives, then they needed to be freed. Perhaps the flock and Xiang could stay together, as the last hybrids on Earth. Every mutant was being terminated, Xiang remembered the scientists at the School saying.

Xiang considered this plan for a moment. What other ideas did she have? She wouldn't be able to last long without any plan for her survival, and this was the only one she could come up with. She admitted to herself that she wanted the company of others who would be her friends, and that she was intrigued about the American flock.

Xiang made up her mind. She was going to find the American flock.

"Move it!" someone next to her suddenly growled, and Xiang jumped aside as a large, brawny man strode past her and toward the ship, where the crane was slowly hauling cargo onto it. On the deck, men were piling the cargo into a hold beneath a small door in the floor.

Xiang's eyes narrowed as she scanned the ship and the men's activity. On the deck, one of the men began shouting at another that the crates weren't being loaded properly. He replied with a burst of angry words, and as the others drew closer, attempting to mollify the argument, Xiang seized her chance.

In one swift movement she leapt high into the air, high enough to be mistaken for a bird, and landed on the other side of the deck, close to the railing, where the men had their backs all turned to her. Nimble as a mouse, she scuttled to the side and jumped down into the enormous rectangular gap in the deck that indicated the storage hole. She forced her way through the crates and boxes, pushing herself into the darkest corner of the enormous hold. It was unimaginably deep and wide, and she could only hope this would be to her advantage. Her heart pounding in terror, she ducked behind one of the largest crates and drew her limbs inward, praying she wouldn't be found.

Above her head, her keen ears detected the sounds of the men's voices, which were lessening in volume. She watched as more and more crates were loaded into the hold by the crane, and made herself absolutely still. Her limbs were beginning to stiffen when the last box of cargo was loaded and the hold was slammed shut, plunging the room into utter darkness.

Xiang sat quite still in the blackness for a while, then, certain they couldn't hear her, began to crawl about, her eyes slowly growing used to it and making out the indistinct outlines of boxes. Her heart still pulsed with alarm, though she knew she was completely alone.

Suddenly, the hold lurched.

Xiang, completely taken by surprise, lurched with it to the left, hitting her head against a wooden crate. Sucking in her breath and struggling to sit upright, she flattened her palms against the cold floor in an effort to remain stationary as the ship continued to rock from side to side. Xiang felt the current of water moving beneath her, as well as the rumbling of engines and various ship machinery. Seawater smacked the sides of the ship, and it began to pitch forward through the waves.

They had begun on their course to California, America.

And to the American flock as well.

------

Xiang struggled into wakefulness, her limbs cramped by her tight quarters with the rest of the boxes. She put up a hand instinctively to shield her sleepy eyes from the light, but only more darkness greeted her. She wriggled around in the tiny space, taking care not to make any sharp movements that would jolt a box.

She had hidden there for days, going completely undiscovered. After the first day she had nearly vomited due to nausea from seasickness, but she overcame it. The hypnotic current of the water was still irritating and made her feel slightly sick, but she was more accustomed to it now.

It had been a hard journey—swiftly ducking behind boxes whenever anyone came to check the hold; sneaking out only at night to steal food from the kitchen; sleeping fitfully only to wake up with a stiff neck and sore limbs; spending long, dull hours hidden alone among the cargo in the darkness. But Xiang had gone through it, and the journey was nearly complete. She took a breath of the musty air, feeling a tingle of excitement.

She had heard the people on the cargo ship shouting to one another that they were almost there early that day, and a jolt of anticipation ran through her, breaking the prolonged boredom of the past few days.

She was nearly there. She would find the American flock, and together they would escape.

As she huddled there, flexing her shoulders in an attempt to relieve the unbearable stiffness, she felt the movements of the ship gradually slowing. A few minutes later, the ship lurched against something, and she lurched sideways against a box, completely off guard again. Picking herself up from the floor, she winced as her muscles whined in protest, and then stood up in the dark, flexing and snapping out her wings again and again. She would need to be prepared if she was to escape the cargo ship undetected.

Swiftly, she picked her way blindly through the maze of cargo until she felt the cold metal wall of the hold. She pressed against it just in time as the door to the hold flew open and the sound of the men's voices filled the air, as well as the creaking of metal. They were preparing the crane on the ship to unload the cargo at the port.

Xiang tensed, ready to escape.

"It's all ready," she heard one of them say to another.

The faces looking down into the hold vanished from view, and Xiang seized her chance. Too swiftly to follow, she leaped up from the darkness many feet below the entrance and burst into the sky, her wings spread wide open, feeling the sunlight suddenly wash over her face.

A feeling of peace settled over her heart. _This _was where she belonged, the sky and the air, not the cramped hold in the bowels of the ship, or a tiny animal's crate at the School. Breathing in joyfully, she hovered above the ship, feeling safe in the knowledge that they could see her and deem her only a passing bird. The seawater sparkled and sunlight rippled over the waves, and the state of California, in _America, _lay before her.

Now she had to find the School where the flock was being held captive.

She closed her eyes, letting the light spill over her face. A seed of dread was beginning to take root in her heart. In the wild confusion that had overtaken her mind after the riot had destroyed the School, she had mindlessly made her plans without stopping to think seriously about them. Now, worry and doubt gnawed at her former reckless confidence. How would she find the flock? California was a large state, and the School was sure to be hidden. It could be anywhere! She could spend the whole of her life searching for the American flock!

A sense of helplessness crawled over her, and she attempted to rid her mind of it. Shaking her head roughly, she soared out above the sun-sparkling sea, loosening her stiff muscles with her flight. Her pigtails, damp with seawater, unraveled, and the wind blew it back from her forehead.

She circled again and again over the waters like a bird, loosing herself in the quiet thrill of flying, wishing she could get rid of all her worries just as easily.

------

It was near afternoon when Xiang finally decided to venture down into the city and see for herself what America was like. She hid in the shadow of a cargo ship, and in all the bustle, quietly drew her wings into the slits in her uniform, and stood upright again.

She looked down at her gray uniform, smoothing down the creases in her shirt. Her hybrid number and the name of the Chinese School were embroidered on the shirt pocket in yellow thread in Chinese. She considered tearing the pocket off, but decided to just hope that the Americans would mistake it for some form of school uniform, not knowing how to read Chinese.

Being in America didn't worry her—she could speak English easily, and she was confident that she would be able to get around by asking questions. At the School, when she had been developing, the scientists had told her, they had hardwired her mind for both Chinese and English, and they'd taught it to her when she was three. She was able to speak it fairly fluently, and could read if she sounded out the words.

Being in unfamiliar land, though, and missing her own home country, though it held bad memories for her, worried her. Everything was so new and different. But that was why she was here, Xiang reminded herself, to start a new life.

Feeling as though she stood out in every way, Xiang stepped out into the street.

She was met with a tangle of neat houses on each side of the street, and colorful cars racing past her, ruffling her hair with a hot blast of air. Americans were strolling down the sidewalks, going to work or shopping.

Xiang tilted her head as she observed them. They looked very different from Chinese people, she noted, with fair skin and hair that could be brown, blond, or even _red_. Their eyes seemed to take on every color in the world, ranging from dark brown to hazel to light blue. But this wasn't the only type of American, she noticed. There were some African-Americans, with dark skin and black hair, like she did, and some people she thought were Indians, with tan skin and black hair. And—over there—some Chinese people!

Xiang felt a small surge of warmth, seeing people from her own country here in America. American truly was a place of diversity. She had never seen so many different people before in the same place. She watched them as they all strolled past her, looking busy and focused, their eyes directed ahead of them. Across the street a group of girls around her own age were looking into a shop window and giggling. Xiang felt a pang of loneliness, but she was relieved that no one seemed to single her out or notice that she was from a School.

This thought giving her fresh confidence, she crossed the street toward the other sidewalk, not knowing exactly what she was doing but wanting to put some purpose toward her plan. As she walked past the group of girls, she accidentally brushed against one of them, an Asian girl. She turned and glanced at Xiang, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully at the Chinese characters on her shirt pocket before turning back to her friends.

Xiang's heart began to pound again. What if the girl could read Chinese and had recognized the name of the School? Was Xiang able to trust anyone here? Anyone could be an enemy. The thought was so daunting that she felt weak at the knees.

Shaking her head furiously, she ran down the sidewalk.

Xiang spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town, watching the people go past her, observing how different they were and what peaceful lives they led—so different from her. She saw little children with their chubby hands firmly clasped by mothers, groups of schoolchildren out shopping, adults walking in and out of buildings, and felt profoundly alone.

As she sat on a bench on the sidewalk, a young woman walked past with a couple of toddlers grouped around her. "Come on, Emily," she cooed to her little daughter, who was straggling behind, skipping along the pavement. "We can't be late, Daddy's waiting for us."

"Okay, Mommy," the little girl chirped, skipping faster after her family.

A shard of grief pierced Xiang's heart, and tears stung her eyes. Here was a family—with a mother, several little children, and a father waiting for them, all linked together by a bond of love. That was what the flock had been. Watching the young woman and the little girl, Xiang was painfully reminded of Yueyin and Jiaxing, and how happy she had felt with her flock around her for the past thirteen years.

Xiang watched, suppressing a sob, as the family crossed the street toward the sidewalk where she was sitting. Emily was still lagging behind, and as the cars raced closer and closer, her mother cried out, "Come on, honey!"

Emily looked to her left, saw a car approaching, and let out a squeak of fear. She ran toward the sidewalk where her family waited, her short little legs tripping over the asphalt, and stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk, slipping with a shriek of fear to the bricks.

But not quite.

In a flash of instinct, Xiang had dashed from the bench to the little girl's side, gripping her shoulders securely and keeping her from falling completely to the ground. As she loosened her hold on the frightened child's shoulders, she was reminded of how Jiaxing's warm little body had felt when Xiang held her, nestled safely into her arms. She gazed down at the American child. She couldn't be more than one or two years older than Jiaxing, she thought. Her eyes were bright blue, but they held the same childlike innocence Jiaxing's had.

The child's mother was rapidly approaching, a look of worry etched on her face, and Xiang instantly stood away, wondering if she should not have caught the girl. Emily ran toward her mother, crying. "Mommy," she wailed, throwing her arms around her waist, "I almost tripped!"

"I know, honey," soothed the woman, running her hand through the child's tangle of light brown curls. "You gotta be more careful next time, okay? You can't run on the street, sweetie."

She looked at Xiang, who was standing awkwardly off to the side, watching. "Thank you so much, sweetheart," she said gratefully. "She might have scraped her leg if she'd fallen. I'm so glad you caught her." She put her hands on Emily's shoulders and swiveled her around to face Xiang. "Say thank you to the nice girl, Emily."

The blue-eyed little girl shyly put her thumb to her mouth. "Thank you," she said timidly.

Xiang's heart nearly broke at the sweet innocence in her little voice. "You're very welcome," she said, almost forgetting to speak English for a moment.

The lady smiled at Xiang for a moment before a ring sounded in her pocket. She quickly pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open. "Mm-hm . . . okay, I'm coming, honey. Sorry, Emily almost fell down on the sidewalk, so we'll be a couple minutes late. Bye. See you."

She snapped the phone shut and turned to her children. "Okay, kids, let's hurry. Daddy's waiting, remember?"

As she took the children's hands in her own, she turned to Xiang again. "Thank you," she said again gratefully. "Well, good-bye." She waved a hand, and then the little family turned and hurried down the sidewalk.

"Goodbye," Xiang said quietly, lifting her hand in a small wave. She watched wistfully as the family departed. Her heart felt warm from the sincere thanks the woman had given her, and from the joy of having a little child so close to her again.

As if she was normal, as if she actually fit in.

She wondered what they would think if they knew she was actually an escaped mutant.

A quiet rumble from her stomach jolted her from her conflicted thoughts. Turning to look at the sky, she saw the bright hues of sunset washing the sky in a colorful brilliance of scarlet, orange, muted peach, and yellow. It was late, and she needed to eat. She sighed and stood up from the bench.

Five minutes later, she had discovered a small restaurant in the corner of a street, with several trash bins outside its back door. Lifting the lid, she sifted through a mess of garbage before she found a paper plate covered by a napkin. Peeling away the napkin, she saw a half-eaten meal of spaghetti. Inwardly rejoicing, she replaced the trash bin's lid and sat down on the cold pavement, gulping down her dinner in hasty swallows. It wasn't enough to fill her stomach completely, but it took the edge off her hunger.

"Hey!"

Xiang looked up in surprise, jolting sideways. A man was standing at the end of the alley, squinting at her. She instantly shot to her feet, letting her empty plate fall to the ground, ready to defend herself.

"What are you doing here?" asked the man, rapidly approaching. One hand reached into his coat pocket, his fingers closing around something inside the cloth. His face was twisted into a scowl, and Xiang instantly decided he was an enemy.

Whipping out her teal-gray wings, she beat them once and soared high over the rooftops with a powerful onrush of air. Below her in the alley, the man shouted and waved an arm, and withdrew his hand from his coat pocket, lobbing the object through the air at her. Xiang gasped as her raptor vision tracked the object at once.

It was a black sphere—the object that had trapped Jinlong back at the School.

It was flung through the air toward her, expanding and twisting, the tarred black strings bursting free of the sphere, flying toward her with evil intent to capture her as they did to her flock leader. A burst of anger shot through her mind, powering her wings with a jolt of energy, and she shot clear of the ropes, streaking into the sky.

Below her, the ropes fell away and returned to the sphere, which dropped down onto the pavement. The strange man walked over and picked it up, storing it back inside his coat pocket. He glanced upward at Xiang, who still hovered in the sky silently.

Suddenly, Xiang couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't bear not being able to trust anyone anymore. She wanted to know exactly who her friends were, and her enemies. Determinedly, she tore out of the sky towards the man, who stood still, stunned with shock, and yanked viciously on his collar. It tore, revealing a chain around his neck that was attached to a card. Ripping the card free of the chain, she kicked the man once sideways, sending him crashing, paralyzed, to the ground, and fled once more to the safety of the dark sky.

Her heart was pounding frantically as she looked away from the prostrate body of the man lying across the sidewalk. He would lie there, petrified for a few hours. She remembered how she'd been taught that combat move back at the School. Why had she done that? It had been instinct, a snap decision. She couldn't let her enemies kill her, so she had stopped him.

She brought the card to her eyes. It was an identification card of some sort, with the man's photograph on it with text printed beneath. Laboriously, Xiang read the words, moving her lips to sound them out.

"_James . . . Andall . . ." _she murmured. "_The Ca-li-for-ni-an Research Fa-cil-ity and School . . ."_

Xiang's eyes opened wide in horror.

Her fears had been confirmed. The man with the black sphere had been after her, to track her and bring her back to the School. But he was from the Californian School, where the American flock was! How could they possibly know of her existence?

She felt frightened, and wary. She felt hunted all over again, like an insect trapped under a magnifying glass, being observed. She stuffed the card into her jacket pocket with sweaty, clumsy fingers, feeling her body suddenly breaking out into a cold sweat.

She needed to escape. She needed to fly.

------

Very early in the morning, when the sky was still dark as night, Xiang landed, exhausted.

She was in some sort of state park in California—Patrick's Point, as the signs indicated—densely forested with all different types of trees. The fragrant scents of pine and wildflowers perfumed the gentle breeze, and the dark sky folded around her like a warm blanket. It felt peaceful and natural here, away from the dizzying confusion of modern life, and she felt very at home.

Her limbs sore from the long flight, she chose a tree—a fir, she guessed—and climbed into it, settling comfortably between two of its branches so she wouldn't fall off in her sleep. Leaning back against the trunk, she closed her eyes wearily and let the scents wash over her. She needed to rest.

Flying relieved all her problems, but she knew that she couldn't keep running away forever. She had a mission, a goal, and however impossible, she would follow it through.

But, the scientists were following her. . . .

How would she be able to survive and find the flock in a world where cruel grown-ups dominated, and sought to capture children? It had been far too close. If the sphere had been thrown slightly closer, she would have been at the man's mercy, and he would have taken her to the School, to captivity once more.

She felt her newfound freedom burning in her heart, drumming fiercely against her ribs, and her hand curled into a fist. The opportunity to escape from the School had been precious and rare, she knew. She wasn't going to relinquish it that easily.

Waves lapped down on the coast, a soothing rhythm like Yueyin's hand rocking baby Jiaxing to sleep. In this peace, she could almost imagine her flock around her, sleeping in the branches of the fir tree with her. . . .

Her eyes fluttered closed against her will, and she slept.

------

_Rustle. Rustle._

Xiang's eyes flew open, shaken awake from her deep sleep. Frowning, she lifted her wrist and found the indent of a twig there where she had pressed her arm too tightly against the tree branch. Sunlight streamed into her eyes, and she closed her eyes as she stretched. Last night had been filled with a peace that she had never known before.

An alarm bell sounded through her head as she remembered what had helped to wake her, apart from the pain of the branch. Crouching on her branch, she forced herself to focus and listen.

_Rustle._

There it was again. Xiang's body tensed. The sound had been near silent, so quiet that if she had been moving even the slightest bit, the noise would have covered up the sound. It was barely discernable, but even so Xiang could guess at the size of the creature. Larger than her, and certainly not an animal.

She slowly peered out from behind the branch, dreading what she could be about to see.

Ah. Not a scientist.

Only a girl, moving below Xiang's tree through the sandy soil, frowning and raising her eyes thoughtfully to the sky. She was tall for her age and very slender, with pale skin. Xiang couldn't make out the features of her face, as her short dark hair concealed it.

Xiang relaxed. It wasn't the man from last night, or another scientist come to trap her. A human girl was relatively harmless, although it would be best to stay hidden in case she reported seeing Xiang. She watched the girl circling the tree slowly in puzzlement. What was she doing? Was she a park ranger? She didn't look it, though.

The girl was muttering words under her breath. Xiang pricked up her ears to listen:

". . . The scent is so strong, I'd be a blind fool not to smell it. But nothing is stirring, hardly anything at all. It's hard when I'm like this—I need to sharpen my senses to make sure."

She suddenly looked straight up into the tree. "Hello?" she called, directly into the branches.

Xiang froze in terror. Slowly, she maneuvered her way over the branch so that she was hidden from the girl's view. Her heart thrummed with alarm as she pressed herself against the rough bark.

_Did she know Xiang was in the tree?_

The girl frowned, tilting her head slightly. "I know you're there," she muttered, and she stretched out her arms.

Xiang felt her mouth go dry as she watched the girl from her position in the tree. Her heart rate increased until it knocked rapidly against her ribs, and her world seemed to tilt and swirl around her, unfocused, before her widened eyes.

Because what she had seen was completely, utterly _impossible._

She had just witnessed the girl morph into a _wolf._


	7. Wolf Girl

Stricken with terror, Xiang could only watch, barely breathing, as the enormous black wolf paced around the roots of the fir tree. She gripped her branch tighter until her knuckles paled to white.

Beneath her, the wolf opened her massive jaws and breathed in, as if scenting the air. One jet-black ear twitched slowly, detecting sounds. Her dark fur rippled over her powerful muscles, streaked with white and gray, as she moved.

Xiang, even in the midst of her mind-shattering fear, couldn't help wondering why the girl had changed into a wolf. How was it possible? It obviously wasn't. Xiang wondered if she had gone insane, if the strain and stress of the last couple of days had finally driven her over the edge, and she was hallucinating.

_Why? How?!_

She shut her eyes tight, knowing that if when she blinked them open again and there was no wolf, she was hallucinating.

It couldn't be true. It couldn't.

Shaking her head furiously, Xiang opened her eyes.

And saw, no wolf, only the girl from before, standing under the branches with her arms crossed.

"Hey, you up there!" the girl shouted. Her voice was slightly hoarse, with a faint rasp to it. "I can smell you, so there's no use trying to hide. I know you're a bird kid, even though the stench of the School covers up most of your scent. Come on, get down here. I just want to talk to you."

Xiang froze. _She had been found out._ Dread thumped in the pit of her stomach as she slowly unwound her fingers from the branch and slid unwillingly down the tree trunk until she stood before the girl, not meeting her eyes.

Silence settled on the air while panicked thoughts chased themselves in circles inside Xiang's head. This person knew about the School. She knew that Xiang was an avian hybrid. She _must _have been sent by the scientists to recapture Xiang.

"I'm not going to hurt you," said the girl after a moment of tense quiet. "Don't be so frightened. Hm." She looked Xiang up and down. "It seems as if you aren't who I was looking for, after all."

Relief drenched Xiang like a wave of ocean water. Suddenly finding her tongue loose and able to speak, she stammered, "Then—you aren't going to take me back to the School?"

To her surprise, the girl threw her head back and laughed. "Of course not! I don't work for the School, you know. Did you really take me for a scientist?"

Xiang was startled into a smile, and felt brave enough to look up at the girl.

She seemed a few years older than Xiang, with a slight physique that concealed the strength in her limbs. Dark hair, cut into layers, just brushed against her shoulders. Her eyes were a stormy gray ringed by black, set into her pale face. Her nose jutted forwards slightly, rather like a wolf's muzzle, and her mouth curved upwards, as if she were a person who grinned often. She was dressed in a black jacket with a hood over a dark red shirt, and dark jeans flared just above her black boots.

If the girl was in a dark alley, Xiang thought as she looked at her clothing, she wouldn't be able to spot her at all.

"Did—did you really turn into a wolf?" Xiang blurted out, suddenly more confident as she realized that the girl had not been sent by the scientists.

The girl raised a shoulder. "Sure. I was made like that."

Xiang caught her breath. "So—you're a recombinant DNA life-form, too!" she realized.

The girl broke into a wide grin. "Yeah. I'm part lupine and it's awesome. A scientist crafted me specially. You know, I'm the only one of my kind?"

"Is it lonely?"

"Sometimes . . ." The girl's storm-gray eyes followed an invisible path across the sky for a moment before she shrugged. "But Jeb says that since I turned out so well, he might make a whole pack of us!"

"Jeb?" queried Xiang.

"Oh, Jeb Batchelder. He's the whitecoat—scientist—who made me. But he's really nice, and different from all the other scientists. He's not focused on cruelly pushing me to higher and higher records, trying to dissect every single part of me. He makes me feel as if I'm actually a person, not an 'it.' He's sort of like my dad, you know." She shrugged, and then glanced at Xiang. "How about you? You must not be from my own School, because I haven't seen you around anywhere."

"No," Xiang began, "I don't come from here. My name is Xiang, and I'm thirteen years old. I—I came from China, from the School there. I . . ."

She went on to explain her life at the School, how she and her flock had been forced to beat the records of Maximum Ride's flock. Tears welled in her eyes as she recounted the terminations of her flock, and she held them back angrily.

The girl patted her back as the tears rolled down Xiang's cheeks. "It's okay to cry," she soothed. "Especially when you have family you love that have gone. I mean, you're really lucky, to have family at all in a place like the _School_. A group of other people like you, who love you, is pretty hard to come by."

Xiang nodded and wiped away her tears. They stood there for a moment near the fir tree, looking up at the strip of pale blue sky above the forest, when the girl said, "I don't mean to pry, but you said your flock was attempting to beat the records of Max. Did you mean, Maximum Ride?" Her eyes sharpened with interest.

"Yes," Xiang replied. "She came from a School in California. Wait—she must be from your own School!" Eagerly, she looked up at the wolf hybrid. "Did you know her?"

The girl bit her lip. "No. I didn't see her at the School, at least. She wasn't there. Jeb says the flock escaped, a long time ago. Like, they escaped four years ago."

Despair sank down into Xiang's stomach. So all this time, she had been looking for the American flock for nothing. She found it hard to speak through a lump of disappointment in her throat. "I—wanted to find them," she whispered.

"What?" The girl knelt down slightly and gazed more closely at her. "You're looking for Max, too?"

Xiang looked up in surprise. "'Too?'" she repeated, distracted for a moment from her regret. "Is Max the person you were looking for?"

The other hybrid nodded. "Yes. I was sent to find her. Apparently, she's not here, near the School. I've been tracking her down, and she's in some sort of forest, according to my nose. But I'm behind schedule a couple days."

"Why?" Xiang asked.

"Well, it was actually your scent. I kept scenting bird kid while I was traveling across California, and it was strong, coming from the coast. I wondered if Max and the flock had somehow returned to California, so I thought I should check it out. It turned out to be you." She smiled crookedly. "And that's how I found you. You _did _think I was a bad guy, didn't you?"

"Well, yes," Xiang admitted. She stared at the ground. "It's hard to know whom to trust," she said quietly. "When you're an escaped experiment, and everyone you see could be your enemy."

The girl put a hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, I can see how you feel," she replied. "It must be pretty difficult being on your own, when you're so young, and thinking about stuff like _enemies _and _sides_. I mean, I'm sixteen, but I'm still too young to be dealing with all this 'taking sides' business. Normal children don't deal with this, but we're different, so we have to."

Xiang nodded; it was true. "How long have you been at the School?" she asked. She felt very comfortable with the girl though she'd known her for barely an hour, but her instinct told her she could trust her.

"Eh, all my life. I'm sixteen, like I said." She sat down in a patch of grass in the soil, and wrapped her arms around her knees. Xiang dropped down beside her, gazing intently at her face.

"Well, it depends on how you look at it," she continued. "I haven't really been at the _School, _technically speaking. I always think of the School as something bad, something evil. Experiments made at the School are tortured and subjected to terrible experiments all their lives, unless they get the rare chance to escape. But that's not my life.

"Jeb made me in an underground lab he founded secretly, without any of the scientists except a few whom he knew he could trust to keep the secrets. He knew it would come in useful when he needed to do experiments that the School wouldn't approve of, since everyone was ruled over by the tyrannical Director woman. Sure enough, the School started creating Erasers, and—"

"Erasers?" Xiang repeated slowly, confused. In her vocabulary, "eraser" was a rubber object use to clear pencil marks. "Why would they do that?"

"No, no," corrected the girl. "That's what they call the lupine-human hybrids made at the School. These hybrids are made solely to hunt down runaway experiments. They're like the guards of the School, who help enforce the rules. They train in this courtyard where they chase after birds the whitecoats free, and then kill them. It's terrible to watch."

Xiang stiffened in spite of herself. "And you're an Eraser?" she asked.

The girl sensed the tension, and twisted around to face her. "No way! _I'm _not an Eraser, they are. And they were created mostly to hunt Max and her flock down. I was made to find Max, not to hunt her. I was coming to that part.

"After Jeb saw what the rest of the whitecoats were doing, he started thinking and forming theories. He wondered why the Erasers were all evil. Turned out, there was some sort of program to hone their levels of ruthlessness.

"He wanted to see what would happen if he made a _good _Eraser, as I'll put it. Wolves are far from being evil, contrary to popular belief. They do _not _kill humans, they do _not _hunt any more than they have to eat. That is, if humans don't tamper with their instincts and hunting behaviors. The Erasers were trained by the whitecoats. In truth, you can't really call them wolves. They're corrupted.

"So Jeb made me, using the same recipe for an Eraser, but as I grew, _he _took care of me. He honed my hunting and scenting and shapeshifting skills, and he taught me the proper ways of the wolf. He did everything the scientists wouldn't have done. I was made to use my skills properly, not to hunt down innocent people. He looked at me one day and told me that I wasn't an Eraser. Instead, he called my breed Lycans.

"He wasn't always around to take care of me, because of his whitecoat duties. The good whitecoats took shifts looking after me. One day, they told me he just disappeared." She clenched a fist. "It was—really bad for me. I missed him a lot, but the others helped.

"Then, months ago, one of the whitecoats got a message that Jeb was _back_! He was really busy though, but he did get to see me one time. He was very serious, though, when he spoke to me. He told me that he had a mission for me, and only I could carry it out. He said that he'd signal me when the time was right.

"So I waited. Sure enough, a whitecoat got a text message from him, saying to inform me of my mission and send me out. They told me to find Maximum Ride and track her down. They told me it was so they could find out how strong my tracking skills were."

She stared off sightlessly into space, and her next words were quiet. "They told me how long ago, a lot of experiments vanished from this place called the Institute, and they were made by a large group of different Schools. They want me to find them and take them back to the School, but to the good whitecoats, so they can be taken care of in secret. This is just a pretest, the said.

"But as they left, one of the scientists whispered in my ear: 'There is another reason you have to find the flock—Max will need all the help she can get to save the world.' Then he hurried away, leaving me at the outskirts of the School."

She rocked back and forth, her arms locked around her knees. "I was really confused. It seems to me all of us mutants—the scientists created us for a _purpose_. Everyone is made for a purpose, but I feel like ours has been orchestrated. They expect us to do things to help the world—the good whitecoats, that is. Max is trying to save the world, they said, and if she needs me, I'm definitely going to help her. That's why I'm searching for her."

Xiang was silent for a moment as she tried to process this. She had known that Max and the flock were special, but she had never in her life guessed that she had been made to save the _world_. She imagined the stress of such a burden on her own shoulders, and shuddered.

"The world is so complicated," she said haltingly after a moment, unable to find a better sentence to express her feelings. Struggling, she went on, "It is full of secrets and hidden truths, when children like us are created for a purpose, and it is all set up for each of us, without us knowing. They made me just for experimentation purposes, but you and Max were created to save the world. . . ."

Her voice trailed off as she looked wonderingly at the girl. "I—want to find Max, too. Right now, I am truly just alone, and I wanted to find others who were like me, so I wouldn't be lonely again."

Her voice petered off to a faint whisper. She stared at the ground, humiliated for having spilled out her feelings like that. She had an inner weakness, and she knew it. Though she had been trained to be a fighter, she was frightened of forever being alone in the world.

"Hey," the girl said gently. "It's okay to want company. We're one-of-a-kind, Xiang. There are barely any others like us, and when the majority of the populace of adults hate us and torture us, it's good to look out for each other and bond together. Heck, if normal human kids get lonely, then we certainly can, too!"

She gave Xiang a bright smile, and the Chinese hybrid felt some of her fears melting away as she looked at her confident, determined expression. _She knows exactly what she's doing, and she's old enough to carry out her mission by herself. I envy her, knowing her path in the world, having a goal, and never being afraid of being alone._

"Xiang?" The girl's voice broke through her thoughts. "Hey, I just thought of something. You know, we're both mutants, and we're both looking for Maximum Ride. . . ."

Xiang looked at her, not quite daring to believe it.

"So . . . why don't we team up and look for her together?"

The girl swung her head around, breaking into another wide, lighthearted smile. "I mean," she laughed, "it's better to stick together, right? We can look out for each other, and we have a common goal. So it's pure coincidence that we met up with each other. We can work together!"

Tears of happiness blurred Xiang's eyes, and she reached out and grasped the girl's outstretched hands. "Yes, please!" she exclaimed. "Thank you so much!" She looked up at her, her gratitude filling her with a joy beyond words.

The girl grinned. "Hey, no problem. It's just common sense." She stood up, pulling Xiang off the ground with her. "Now, you weren't just planning to stick around here in this park, were you? C'mon. Let's get moving and find Max!"

Xiang nodded, caught up in the girl's enthusiasm. "Yes! Of course! But wait a moment, please," she added, before the girl could tug her away down the trail. "Um, what is your name?"

The girl halted in her frenzied movements and clapped a hand to her forehead. "I cannot believe I forgot to tell you my name. I'm really sorry!" She gave Xiang a sheepish smile. "You're going to have to excuse my absentmindness." Then she beamed happily, and announced:

"My name is Ariana Batchelder."

------

**Chocolate-chip cookies to anyone who understands why Jeb named her that. Probably all of you, so, cookies in advance! And things are gonna get very interesting now that Xiang has met the Eraser-who's-really-a-Lycan!**

**And please review? Please, please, please? It gives me motivation to write the next chapter! **


	8. Attack

**Sorry for the long wait, everyone! School just kept me really busy, and I haven't had time to update till now. Well, anyways, here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy! **

------

Feet pounded against earth as Ariana hauled Xiang through the forest, racing confidently in and out of the trees. Her eyes were focused straight ahead of her, as if she knew exactly where she was headed.

"Where are we going?" gasped Xiang as she was jerked along another trail.

"I want to pick up a couple of supplies I left behind before we leave," Ariana answered, quickening her pace. Swerving sharply around a wide fir tree, she skidded to a stop, pulling Xiang with her and suddenly ending their run. "Here we are!" she announced, sounding completely unaffected by their frantic rush through the forest.

She knelt down at the base of the tree and reached in between two of the roots. As Xiang watched, she pulled out a dark, bulging backpack and slung it over her shoulder. Reaching back into the roots and dragging out another, smaller backpack, she handed it to Xiang.

"I knew it was a good idea to bring an extra one!" Ariana grinned. She jerked her thumb at the backpack Xiang was putting on. "That's got food, clothes, and money in it. Don't lose it. " She surveyed Xiang's lab uniform. "You know, maybe you should go ahead and change into some of my things. You might be recognized wearing a School uniform."

Xiang nodded and went to change behind a tree. Unbuckling the straps of the backpack, she peered in. She was met by an array of food packed into sandwich bags, bars of candy and granola, bottles of water, more food wrapped in paper, a purse of coins, a stack of bills held together by a rubber band, and right at the bottom, a stack of clothes.

_She must have been prepared very well by the scientists, _Xiang thought as she slid a few of the clothes out. There was a hooded black sweatshirt, a long-sleeved dark blue shirt, and dark jeans. She flung these on, stuffing her uniform into the pack, and ducked back out from behind the tree. The clothes felt warm and comfortable, far better than anything she had worn before.

"Thank you," she said gratefully to Ariana.

Ariana was crouching on the roots of the tree, studying a piece of paper and eating a granola bar. "You're welcome!" she said with a smile, looking up as Xiang sat down beside her. "I'm really glad we happened to meet, Xiang."

"So am I," Xiang said sincerely. She looked over Ariana's shoulder at the piece of paper. "What are you looking at?"

Ariana frowned and tilted her head sideways, scanning the paper for a few moments. "It's a map," she said, handing Xiang a granola bar. "I'm tracking Max, and there are times when scent alone can't tell me everything. Right now, we're over here on the north coast." Her slender finger slid across the paper to indicate where the state park was labeled on the map. "But the whitecoats told me that I would find her in Arizona, most likely. We're going to have to go some ways if we're really going to find her. She never stays in one place for long."

Ariana sat back on her heels, looking thoughtful. "Perhaps she has some information about the escaped mutants from the Institute of Higher Living. The whitecoats say she came into contact with a couple of them, and several of the group were bird kids, like you."

Xiang's heart gave a thump. So she and Max's flock weren't the only ones, after all? There were other avian hybrids out there? A bubble of hope bloomed in her mind.

Ariana looked at her. "But it's going to be dangerous. We're going against everything the School has ever done, created, carefully orchestrated, or thrown sand over to cover their tracks. They're going to try to stop us with everything they have. Look at us. You're an escaped experiment who could possibly make Max's forces stronger by joining her flock. I'm the first 'good Eraser' of my kind who could rescue all the mutants they have ever made, and put a halt to their experiments. With all of us together, we could very possibly destroy the force behind the Schools itself."

Her voice had darkened, and her eyes burned fiercely. Xiang, watching her, sensed this was a darker side of the wolf hybrid, and shivered. She had not realized what an enormous burden lay on her shoulders as an escaped mutant, and the power she held to bring an end to the Schools.

"I'm ready," she said, lifting her chin.

Ariana stood up, slinging her pack over her shoulder. "Then let's go."

------

Xiang swooped high above the forests below, feeling the rush of air glide past her cheeks. She looked down, feeling the familiar rush of exhilaration knowing that she was hundreds of feet above ground. She could just make out the silver-black figure of Ariana in wolf form racing through the trees below her, bounding so swiftly she left tracks six to eight feet apart.

Well, Xiang certainly had something to think about.

She dipped slightly to the left, catching an air current and feeling it lift her up higher into the sky, buoying her up like she was in water. For the first time since she had escaped from the School, she felt _whole_. She now had a clear purpose for her life, and she had found a traveling companion.

Ariana certainly was a cheerful and optimistic person, always ready to take action, ready to do anything. She was fortunate that she had never been subjected to terrible experiments, poked and prodded and examined like a jewel in a case. She had known only the good scientists who had cared for her, like Jeb, her father.

What would it be like to have a scientist for a father? Xiang wondered, stroking her wings powerfully. What would it be like, _knowing _your father?

Like most of the mutants at the School, Xiang and her flock had never known their parents. She had heard stories of the scientists themselves donating their own eggs to be made into mutants, and she had been horrified. The scientists _knew _the depths of the cruelty they were inflicting on their own children, yet they allowed it to happen. Why were so many adults so heartless?

At least Ariana's father seemed to have known what he was doing. He seemed different from other scientists. Xiang felt a pang of envy, then remembered Jinlong and Yueyin.

She sighed heavily, biting down hard on her lip. The flock had been her family, her only family. Jinlong had been her father, Yueyin her mother, Fong and Jiaxing her younger siblings. They had been everything a family should be. She had always known it had been so.

But things change, she reminded herself bitterly. She was not normal, and nothing would ever be the same for her.

_But I've got Ariana._

This thought lifted her spirits, and she smiled happily. She caught a thermal as it rose up from below her, and she was carried high into the air, matching her soaring spirits.

------

"I've got her scent," Ariana informed Xiang when they stopped for a break, panting. "But it's going to be hard running all that way without being able to fly."

She gazed at Xiang's wings, mantled upon her back, with a sort of admiration in her eyes. "I'll try tracking her further, though, as far as I can. With some luck, I'll mutate and get the ability to fly."

Ariana spread the map flat out on the ground and tapped her finger against the paper. "We've been following the Eel River so far, working our way down from the north coast towards the south, to the California-Arizona border," she said, her eyes trailing across the crisscrossing of lines and markings on the map. "Hopefully, Max will be there by the time we get to her. In the meantime, we have got to speed ourselves up."

Xiang nodded in agreement, too winded to speak. She wouldn't admit it, but there was a strange, burning pain in her center, and it was irritating her. It had developed over the flight, and she wasn't sure why it had happened. It ached like heated metal, and made her feel uncomfortable and nauseous, fading and returning over and over again. Not wanting to slow down the mission, she clenched her teeth and stared fixedly at the map.

"In the meantime," the wolf girl continued, standing up and brushing dirt off her jeans, "let's go and buy some food. Apparently, we're not far from a town, and there's sure to be a gas station with a store where we can get some cheap food."

A few minutes later, Ariana and Xiang were standing on the crest of a grassy hill, looking down into a little town. Xiang had cut slits in the back of her sweatshirt with Ariana's pocketknife, and now she anxiously rechecked her reflection in the shining window of a nearby store.

"Calm down," whispered Ariana, "you look fine."

She seemed completely tranquil about the whole situation; if nothing in this world could actually faze her. Feeling a surge of trust, Xiang followed her as she strolled nonchalantly across the street toward a gas station.

The two mutants, sidestepping cars and drivers, hurried toward the store situated in the back of the gas station, next to the car wash. Ariana pushed open the door, earning a tinkle from the bell, and waved Xiang through.

Xiang felt herself instinctively freeze up as she entered the tiny store. Shelves and shelves of goods crammed the small space, and a musty smell filled the air. There were too many _things_, not enough _room_. She felt trapped, and had to restrain herself from leaping nervously into the air.

Shivering, she crossed her arms over her chest, feeling light-headed and claustrophobic. The pain in her stomach was intensifying, and she could barely focus. She quickly sat down on the cold floor next to a rack of magazines and laid her head on her knees, willing herself to calm.

Her eyes flicked back and forth across the space between her knees. White tiles covered the floor, cracked and spiderwebbed with tiny fissures as thin as a hair. Her pulse pounded loudly in her ears, and she shut her eyes against the hot pain. Sounds faded into the background, indistinct, blurring.

"Um, yeah, I'll take a couple," she heard Ariana's voice saying in front of her, the words ringing in her ears as uselessly as a mumble.

_What's wrong with me? Why are my senses disconnecting? Am I dying?_

Xiang felt a twinge of fear.

"Hey!"

Xiang glanced sharply up, wincing as she became aware of the new ache throbbing in her head. Ariana was walking towards her with a smile, a bulging white plastic bag slung over her arm. Her smile faded as she saw Xiang's painful expression.

"What's wrong?" she whispered, lifting Xiang to her feet and guiding her out of the cramped store.

"My head," Xiang mumbled, her fingers unconsciously reaching upward to rub her temples. "And my stomach. There's a pain, somewhere, inside of me. . . ."

Ariana glanced sharply at her, her eyes flickering as she thought fast. "It must be the work of the whitecoats," she muttered, handing Xiang a water bottle. "Something gone wrong. Just have some water, and let's see if you get better."

Xiang sucked down the water, gratefully breathing in the air along with it in huge gulps. It wasn't exactly fresh, but anything was better than that little confined space they called a store.

Ariana found a wooden bench outside one of the adjoining shops and guided Xiang toward it. "Sit down," she murmured, dropping down beside the Chinese hybrid with a concerned look in her eyes. "Do you feel better?"

Xiang leaned against the back of the bench and closed her eyes. The dizziness was receding, though the pain still lingered. She forced herself to nod.

"Try to eat," Ariana urged, taking out a wrapped sandwich from the plastic bag and handing it to her. "You're probably just weak because you haven't had much to eat. You've got a high metabolism rate, like me. I have to eat at least two-and-a-half pounds of meat every day just to live, but I can eat twenty easily at a meal."

Xiang felt ill just imagining having to eat all that meat. She hesitantly raised the sandwich to her lips, but she could force herself to take only a few bites. The aches were intensifying, and her entire body felt weak. It hurt just to chew. She shook her head and gave up.

Ariana flinched, alarmed and becoming a little frightened. "Should we see a doctor?" she asked quietly, slipping an arm around the younger girl's shoulders. "I mean, just get some medicine that might help you? If you're this ill, we shouldn't move on."

Xiang didn't answer. Her pulse roared in her ears, and the scent of heated metal, crackling with energy, overtook her senses, though there was nothing there that would release that smell.

_How do you know if you're dying?_

She opened her eyes a slit. Through that crack of vision she saw Ariana grabbing her shoulders and saying something urgently, but she couldn't make out the words except for one.

_What does "expire" mean?_

It felt as if some enormous force was pressing down upon her, bearing down heavily. She wanted to absorb it, suppress it, but there was too much energy.

_Movement. Energy._

Her eyes flickered open.

"Ariana," Xiang rasped. "Something—something's coming. . . ."

Ariana's eyes widened. "How can you know that? You can't scent . . ." Her voice trailed off as she suddenly stood upright, the hairs prickling on the back of her neck. Her dark eyes widened.

"You're right," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I can smell it, and hear it. It's approaching."

She panned the area around her in a quick, cautious glance and drew in a deep breath. A strange expression flickered like a fleeting shadow over her face, and she suddenly yanked Xiang to her feet off the bench. Xiang drew in a sharp breath of pain.

"You have to get up, Xiang," Ariana hissed, her voice dark and guttural, completely unlike the Ariana Xiang knew. Her expression was wary, shadowed with bitter fury.

Xiang looked at her uncertainly. "Ariana . . .?"

"Watch out!" the wolf-girl suddenly spat, and jerked Xiang sharply to the side as a dark car screeched up the street in a blurring blaze of gas and shining metal; lurching to a halt where the two girls stood; the car doors slamming violently open, denting the paint and splintering the glass, and strange men leaping out, guns at the ready.

Xiang had no time to react, or even feel afraid. She just stood there, her senses draining away, as the white-hot pain at her center continued to burn.

Ariana drew back her lips in a snarl, revealing the sharp fangs of a wolf, and stepped defensively in front of Xiang. "Who are you?" she hissed.

The men fanned out, their faces concealed by dark glasses, until they stood in a sort of semicircle. Their guns were leveled straight at Xiang and Ariana, loaded with vials of tranquilizer. They did not reply.

At that moment, another man stepped out of the damaged car. He bore the intelligent look of an educated person, and he wore the white coat of a scientist. He regarded the mutants with a completely casual expression, as if they were nothing more than two items on display.

"An escaped mutant," he observed carelessly, "and an illegal experiment." He paused, his eyes flicking back and forth between them. "Actually, both of you are illegal, I suppose you know, judging by the termination law. Obviously, you two belong back at the School."

"Oh yeah?" Ariana spat, her voice still harsh and low. "Well, _you _belong back at the asylum."

Xiang felt terror lock in her throat as the man turned his gaze on her. She hated herself for the way fear took over her mind, immobilized her limbs, left her as weak and as helpless as a lump of quivering jelly. She needed to do something, needed to think of a way to escape.

_But how?!_

"Get in the car," ordered the man in a hard voice. He gestured to the open car door. "We won't say it again. Either you leave with us of your own free will, or my men will shoot you and you'll come with us anyways. It's your choice."

Xiang closed her eyes as she felt dread swallow her, pulling her down into a black chasm of despair. _To be locked away again. . . . _

"Guess what?" Ariana snarled. Behind her back, she very subtly touched Xiang's fingers: a warning to prepare. "I say—think again!"

Darts hammered against the surface of the pavement as the men fired. Xiang flattened herself against the pavement at once, twisting from side to side as the darts slammed into the sidewalk, but Ariana was quicker. In an effortless movement, she morphed into a wolf, ducking low under their range and moving too rapidly for them to track her.

The shooters changed direction, but she was already one step ahead of them: she had slipped behind their backs and returned to human form. Now, she let out a wordless growl of fury and kicked one of the shooters hard in his lower back. He dropped to the ground with a cry of pain, and the others reacted instantly, firing at Ariana, but she ducked under the body of the felled shooter. Instantly, several tranquilizer darts embedded themselves in his back, and he went limp.

Ariana moved like a blur, kicking and punching, landing hard, razor-sharp blows on the men, morphing incessantly, her eyes cold and merciless. Over her shoulder she screamed: "_Xiang, run!"_

"Get her!" exclaimed the man as he saw Xiang shoot up to the rooftops above, and the remaining shooters aimed their guns, but Ariana dealt them both a devastating uppercut, and they reeled backwards, their weapons clattering to the pavement as they, too, fell, clutching their jaws.

Xiang swooped down from the roof and landed beside Ariana. She gazed at her friend's rigid, white face, streaked with blood and bruises, and hated herself as she looked at her hands, bare of the marks of battle.

Why did I run when Ariana was fighting? Why didn't I help her? Why do I always run away?! I'm such a coward! I'll never be as brave as her.

Guilt and shame bit deep inside of her, and she looked down at the ground, certain that Ariana was disgusted at her now.

The man who had issued the orders stood there, alone, in front of the dark car in the street, his eyes wide with shock. Clearly, he hadn't expected his fighters to lose.

"Did you underestimate us?" Ariana said nastily, stepping over the motionless body of one of the shooters. "What a surprise."

The man's eyes widened as Ariana approached menacingly, her eyes sharp with contempt. He backed away rapidly, his feet tripping nervously against the pavement. He stumbled and fell, twisting sideways and crashing back against the car door with a cry of alarm.

At a signal from Ariana, Xiang flew towards him, grabbing his arm in a steely grip and twisting it behind his back so he couldn't move. Ariana grabbed his shoulders at the same time, pinning him against the car. She gave Xiang a nod of approval, and the Chinese girl felt a slight joy stir in her heart, that she had been able to help her friend.

Ariana brought her face close to the man's, and he instinctively flinched away, cowering in fear, sweat visibly breaking out on his forehead. "How did you track us?" she hissed, her voice deathly chill. "Tell us, and we might let you live—barely."

Xiang watched Ariana in increasing confusion. It was like she was another person, a dark and sinister warrior instead of the cheerful, optimistic girl she usually was. What was wrong with her?

The man gulped, wriggling away, but Ariana and Xiang held him in a tight grip. Finally he looked down and stammered, "Radar. You show up differently from other humans, and—and we found you. You were quite close to the School, and there aren't supposed to be any recombinant DNA life-forms, so they sent us out to recapture you, and—"

"Stop babbling," snarled Ariana, and nodded at Xiang. "Xiang, search him."

Xiang, keeping one hand firmly clamped on his arm, patted down the pockets of his jacket and jeans, removing a card and a wallet. She handed them to Ariana, who glanced at them briefly before stuffing them into her backpack.

"So, I'll take those," she muttered, turning back to the man. "Is there any reason why we should let you live, you pathetic slave of the School?"

The man began to perspire once more, muttering incoherent, jumbled words in his fear. "Y-yes, I'll never tell anyone, I swear, they'll never know where you went, I'll cover your tracks, and destroy the radar, and I can tell you more information—"

"What?" Xiang broke across his words and looked beseechingly at Ariana. "More information?"

Ariana considered a moment, chewing her lip. "Do you know Maximum Ride?" she said after a moment's pause.

The man looked a shade brighter, and immediately babbled out, "Yes, yes, she's one of our most successful experiments, and she escaped from the lab four years ago, with her flock, and she was taken away by—"

"Do you know of her whereabouts?" Ariana interrupted.

The man licked his lips nervously. "Uhm, n-no, we have nothing of her, but there are bits and pieces of rumors, that she brought down a few Schools, and the Director hasn't said anything about it, but she might have information, but, and, she's probably in Arizona, because things have leaked out, and she's somewhere down in those states, we don't know—"

"All right," Ariana said, cutting across the man's words. She stared down at the ground for a moment, and a shadow flickered across her expression before she suddenly glanced up again, bearing an enormous grin. Xiang jolted; this was the Ariana she was used to.

"Okay, Xiang," Ariana said cheerfully, "you can go ahead and kill him now."

Horrified, Xiang stared at her. The man uttered a terrified little squeak before his eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted dead away, right there before them.

Ariana threw her head back and laughed loudly. "Ah, that always works!" she said, winking at Xiang, who was immensely relieved. "I was just kidding."

They put the man in the backseat of the car and trussed him up in safety belts, tied in complicated knots so that he would have a hard time fighting his way out when he came to. Then they gathered their things and left the town, jogging up the hill back toward the woods.

Xiang glanced sideways at her companion as they ran through the grass. Ariana's face was serene and peaceful, a sharp contrast to her expression only a few minutes prior. Xiang shook her head in confusion. There were so many things she was worried about.

Besides Ariana's strange moods and the constant hiding, they now had the added threat of being tracked down. How could they trust the man not to tell anyone he had seen them, if he ever untied himself? There were sure to be people from the School who would realize he had been out a long time, and would come looking for him, and cut him free. And then, they might track them again, and this time, send out far greater numbers. They would never be free.

But there was another worry, Xiang reflected, as she reached the crest of the hill, something far greater that tugged at her constantly:

_Will I ever be brave enough?_

------

**Huh. There's something odd about Ariana, and it's not just that she's a good Eraser….**

**And poor Xiang, always faltering before the strike in a battle. We'll see if she overcomes her fear. And what's with that weird white-hot pain she keeps having? Only time can tell!**

**It's going to be weekly updates from now on, what with school and clubs and piano going on. I'm so busy….**

**Review, please! **


	9. Pain

**Hi everyone! It's Nighty!**

**First off, let me apologize for not keeping with my promise and not updating last week. I'm really sorry...that week, there was a lot of homework and stuff going on at school, and I just couldn't find the time to update. But, I'll try to update every week from now on!**

**Okay, here's chapter nine!  
**

* * *

There was no time to linger, or to rest.

All Ariana and Xiang wanted to do was to put as much distance between themselves and the town where they had been discovered. The incident had disturbed both of them deeply, though outwardly Xiang remained calm, and Ariana wore her usual cheerful expression.

Xiang and Ariana had been traveling for hours. Xiang dared not rise into the air to fly as she had done before, in case, as Ariana had said, she was seen by their enemies.

"They could be anywhere," she had told her darkly. "The School has much more power and resources than you could ever imagine."

Now the wolf-girl and the avian hybrid were moving side by side through another forest, slipping nimbly between the trees, Xiang barely a foot from the ground, aloft in the air, Ariana leaping through the undergrowth in wolf form.

Xiang drew her hand across her sweat-coated forehead, breathing hard. Her wings and body ached from being cramped inside the trees, unable to stretch completely fully, and she longed to soar into the blue blissfulness of the sky, without having to worry about the threat of danger.

Her headache had faded for a moment in her anxiety, but it was beginning to return in full force as weariness settled down on her. The fiery, burning pain in her center had lessened, but only slightly.

She dared not mention it to Ariana, fearing it would only slow them down. Besides, she didn't want Ariana to think she was weak and useless, especially after what had happened at the battle, when she had been too frightened to fight.

She gritted her teeth savagely. If she wanted to be of use and successfully find Maximum Ride, she needed to be stronger, to be more inured to the sight of attack, instead of running and hiding like a coward at the moment of battle.

Now, new fears presented themselves to her.

Perhaps, she thought fearfully, this was the effect of having left the School in China. Was she tied to the School, and therefore forced to experience pain if she left it? No, she reasoned, because the pain had only started long after she left China.

Could it be from the remote? With a twinge of dread, Xiang suspected it was so. Perhaps the remote had not been meant to be destroyed. There was a chip in her, she knew that much, and it was part of the remote as well as her. Were these the effects of destroying the remote? Would this terrible pain follow her for the rest of her life?

She was shaken from these anxious thoughts as Ariana prowled to her side and morphed back into a girl. Xiang could never quite catch how she did it—her features seemed to blur and her form lengthen before her eyes, and in a moment's passing, she had changed shape.

"We're going to have to rest for now, Xiang," Ariana told her, her words punctuated with pants. She rubbed the sweat off her forehead and crouched down slightly. "But not here. There's a thunderstorm coming our way, and it's going to be really bad."

"How do you know?" Xiang asked, surprised once more at her companion's knowledge.

Ariana's lips curled in a wolfish grin and she tapped the side of her nose. "Scent alone. I can smell the rain in the clouds. And it's going to be a very heavy thunderstorm, when it comes. We should get out of the trees."

She took Xiang's hand, but she hesitated. "Ariana...where will we go, though? The only places we can safely rest are in the trees where no one can see us. Won't the trees protect us from the storm?"

Xiang, having never left the School before this, had rarely experienced the forces of nature beyond those fabricated in tests designed by the scientists. Closeted as she was inside the School, her environments controlled by the geneticists, she knew little about storms.

"No, it's more dangerous beneath the trees in a storm," Ariana explained rapidly. "Lightning strikes tall things first. So if we stay under the trees, we're more likely to get hit. Somewhere open is better..."

The two of them darted through the woods, hand in hand, their shoes kicking up small bursts of soil as they weaved in and out of trees, ducking beneath sharp, slapping branches.

Xiang felt the energy gathering in the sky above her, and a current of tingling excitement prickled up her arms. The storm would break soon.

Wet raindrops, one after the other, splashed down to them from the dark, cloud-scudded skies, fat and heavy. Xiang watched them fall as she ran, glittering dewdrops from the heavens, and thought it was rather like the sky was crying. The raindrops parted around her like a curtain, thickening and sharpening into needles of prickling water, showering heavily down on her.

By the time the two of them burst from the trees at last, the rain was pouring like water from an overturned jug.

Ariana leaned over, brushing wet mud from the hem of her jeans, and Xiang crouched down near the dripping leaves of a bush, the rain skittering down her back. She was utterly soaked, but the water washed away the grime and muck of the previous day. The drops danced in her vision, blurring everything she saw through a fine white mist.

A road sign stood in the ground not far off from them, drops rolling off its shiny green surface. A street ran beside it, and cars crawled slowly on it, windshield wipers swiping the glass in unison with barely audible thumps. Bright red lights burned through the rain-mist from the cars, cutting paths through the fog. The tailpipes puffed white clouds from the rears of the cars.

Xiang stood up, drenched, her clothes soaking wet.

"Ariana, we can't stay here," she said to the wolf-girl who stood motionless near the road sign, as if she didn't care who saw her. "These are _people_, in cars. What if they think it's odd two children are out here in a storm? What if one of them is from the School?"

She broke off as she noticed that Ariana wan't listening.

"Ariana? Are you okay?"

The other hybrid turned to her, and Xiang saw with a jolt of alarm that her teeth were gritted together as if in pain, and her eyes darted oddly about. One of her hands gripped a shoulder tightly, and she was slightly hunched over.

"Oh no! How did you get hurt?" Xiang cried, running over to her.

_Was she injured in the fight without me noticing?_

Ariana shook her head slowly, her chopped dark hair swaying back and forth over her eyes. "I'm fine," she hissed, though her grip tightened against her shoulder. "Probably just a sprain. Don't worry..."

She winced, rolling one of her shoulders. Xiang heard a faint pop as she loosened it, attempting to relieve the pain.

_Does Ariana feel pain in her shoulder the same way I feel a pain in my center? _

The thought sprang to Xiang's mind like a spark of fire, and her eyes widened as another thought occurred to her:

_Are we both being tracked?_

"Can you walk?" she asked, fighting the panic rising in her. She slipped her arm through Ariana's. "Do you need me to help you?"

Ariana forced out a pained smile, and it was hard for Xiang to watch, seeing the hurt she was feeling draining away her usual happy attitude.

"Wolves have good balance," she hissed out between gritted teeth. "I'll be fine."

Xiang looked about in desperation through the falling white curtains of rain. She needed to take Ariana somewhere where she could rest. Remembering the pain she had felt in the store at the gas station, she knew only too well the intensity of the ache Ariana was suffering. Her own burning had begun to lessen since then, enough for her to ignore it at times.

Xiang owed everything to the wolf-girl who had found her and let her join her on her mission. Now she needed _her_, and she would help her as best she could.

"Okay, okay," Xiang murmured, urging her gears of her brain to spin faster. _Think of something! _"These cars have to be heading somewhere. Maybe a town, or something...."

She glanced wildly about her in frantic distress for anything that would help her, and her eyes suddenly caught the white words glaring out of the road sign.

_Fort Bragg, 1/2 mile._

A town! Relief drenched Xiang like a wave, and she guided Ariana carefully toward the sidewalk, splashing through puddles of icy water.

"Can you make half a mile?" she whispered.

Ariana pulled a wry expression as she limped on beside her, shoulders pressed close against her sides. "Yeah, of course. I haven't suddenly become totally helpless, you know."

------

About ten minutes later, the two of them limped onto a stretch of yellow grass running beside the sidewalk. A small green sign jutted out of the ground, proclaiming: _Welcome to Fort Bragg!_

Ariana immediately slumped down against the wooden fence behind the sign, letting her head drift down onto her chest. She closed her eyes and rested for a moment, breathing hard and fast, rainwater dripping off her brow.

Xiang hunched down beside her, shivering, wrapping her arms around herself and feeling the water in her clothes squelch. On the street, brightly colored cars still streamed past. "Are you okay?" she whispered. "We made it."

Ariana gave a nod of her head, wincing as she moved her shoulder again. "I feel a little better now," she rasped after a pause. "Let's go find somewhere dry to stay for a while."

"Okay." Xiang took her arm again, and together they waited at the edge of the sidewalk until the pedestrian lights flashed on, and then they crossed the road.

Xiang kept glancing sideways in concern at her friend as they stepped onto the walk at the other side and continued on. Her face was pale, drawn, and tight, sweat beading her forehead, and she was biting her lip hard. She had recovered slightly during their half-mile walk, but the pain seemed to be returning now, in short bursts, as Xiang's had done.

Ariana glanced down at her, sensing her scrutiny. "I told you, I'm fine," she said, attempting to smile. "I just need to--take a break for a while."

Xiang nodded and kept her gaze down on the ground, but despite her companion's words, dread crawled up her spine like ice.

The prospect of both of them being tracked by the School was far too dangerous and threatening to be ignored.

And more than possible, that was probably what was happening.

------

She brought Ariana to a shopping plaza nearby. They hobbled down row after row of rain-slicked cars before reaching the line of stores at the other end. They practically ran toward it, Ariana somehow finding the strength, eager to be out of the rain and under the stone awning.

They raced toward the stores, at last bursting out of the rain into the dry space under the awning. Xiang, panting and shivering from the cold, leaned back against the wall with a sigh of weariness, resting her head against the stone. It was only then that she realized how soaked she was.

"Ugh...wow." She lifted a sopping-wet sleeve and shook it at Ariana, laughing a little at its swollen limpness.

Ariana grinned and shook the jacket of her own sleeve back at her, splattering drops onto Xiang's head. Xiang ducked, yelping in surprise, "Ariana!"

"Not too sick to play after all, am I?" The wolf hybrid laughed with a flash of her old mischief, flapping her wet sleeves at Xiang.

"I guess not," Xiang admitted, feeling a deep relief swell in her. If Ariana had enough strength to tease her, perhaps she was all right after all. Perhaps the burning was only temporary, and it would all pass completely over soon. Feeling her spirits rising in happiness, she turned and surveyed the surroundings. They were standing right outside the glass window of a buffet restaurant.

"Yeah, let's eat," Ariana decided.

"You mean, just buy some food like last time and eat it out here?"

"Nope!" She pulled open the door. "We're actually going to go in and eat with other people."

Xiang hung back, uncertainty creeping across her features. She was wary of other people other than Ariana, having had such a bad experience at the School.

She looked through the window and saw tables of normal humans, sitting and eating. From what she could see through the wet glass, there were a lot of them there. What if they detected something suspicious? What if they were associated with the School? What if--

Ariana put a hand on her shoulder. "Xiang. It's gonna be okay. We look completely normal, just like real humans. We're not going to be spotted. Plus, it's a buffet. That means we can eat as much as we like! One of the good things about humans!"

Xiang wavered, feeling her stomach rumble. _Well, if Ariana says it's safe...._

_But if they find us again this time, I _will _fight._

Reassured by her statement, she allowed Ariana to guide her into the restaurant. A thousand tantalizing smells hit her at once as she stepped through the door, and she breathed in deeply. "Food!" she whispered, her shrunken stomach growling.

What was more, it was actually _warm _in there.

"Can I help you?"

Xiang jumped slightly and turned sideways to face the source of the question. Behind a high wooden desk, a young woman in a waitress's outfit stood, her painted lips bared in a bright, fake smile.

"Yeah," Ariana said curtly, taking out her purse from her backpack. "It'll be the two of us, please."

The woman's eyes narrowed slightly as Ariana handed over the money, wrinkling her pert nose contemptuously at the rainwater they were dripping all over the carpet.

Xiang felt suddenly very self-conscious and wary under her disapproving scrutiny, and hugged her arms across her chest. She kept her eyes on the woman's face, watching her carefully. She couldn't be too careful--anyone here could be one of _them_.

The woman tore off the receipt with a sharp ripping sound and handed it to Ariana. "Please seat yourselves," she said, her lips still curved in that fake, practiced smile. "We hope you enjoy your meal."

"Okay, c'mon," Ariana urged, leading Xiang away from the desk to a small booth against the wall. "I'm starving, aren't you?"

"Do you really get to eat as much as you want?" Xiang asked curiously.

"Yeah, totally!" The previous pain that had rendered Ariana's face tight with tension had vanished, and a rosy color was beginning to return to her cheeks. She seemed almost back to normal. How long would it last, though? "Come on, you go over to that really long metal table-thing, with all those little containers of food, and you take a plate and just put whatever you want on it."

It was just as she said. For the first time, Xiang was able to eat as much as she wanted and feel what it was like to actually be full. Filling numerous plates of American food from the buffet, she carried them to their booth and ate her fill. Sleepy and content, she leaned back against her seat, letting the warmth of the place wash over her.

Ariana was still eating. She seemed to be a stomach the size of China, Xiang thought in amusement. Then again, she _had _said that she was able to eat twenty pounds of meat easily in one sitting.

"How mayn plates have you eaten so far?" she asked incredulously as Ariana approached their booth once more with yet another plate, piled high with chicken legs, bread, and potatoes.

The wolf-girl tilted her head and sat down. "Eh, I think eighteen so far."

Xiang was speechless. Her jaw hanging open slightly, she looked from Ariana to her plate and then back again.

Ariana held up in hands in mock surrender. "Hey, I'm hungry! Don't look at me!"

"You _are _attracting quite a lot of stares from everybody here," Xiang teased. "They're all wondering how you eat all of that. Where do you put it all?"

She laughed, surprised that she was doing so. She hadn't felt such warmth and contentment ever since her flock had been terminated. It was a beautiful feeling, to have enough food to eat, a place to rest, and a friend. Wherever her flock was now, she hoped they had them too.

Suddenly, a roaring thunderclap rattled the windows wildly, silencing the diners at once, followed by a searing claw of blue lightning splitting the dark skies outside in half, and the heavy growl of thunder rolled around the restaurant.

Xiang let out a cry of terror and grabbed onto Ariana's arm across the table. "Ariana! What was that?!" she cried, her voice high and shrill with fear.

Ariana had calmly continued to eat throughout the storm, and now she looked up with a reassuring smile. "Xiang, that's the storm. Don't worry, it can't hurt us. It sounds really scary, doesn't it?"

She nodded and sat back, biting her lip as her face turned red, embarrassed that she had reacted hysterically.

Little by little, the chatter in the restaurant built up again as everyone grew accustomed to the crashing sounds of the storm wreaking havoc in the skies outside. Xiang gazed out of the window, watching the blue lightning flash again and again, lighting up the room with its sharp, burning light.

A sudden movement caught her eye. She turned to see the blond woman who had greeted her and Ariana so coldly at the desk turning to speak with some man standing behind her.

The woman turned her head after conferring quietly with the man--and her sharp blue eyes glared straight at Xiang.

Xiang stiffened in shock, her dark eyes widening and her teeth gritting together as she very subtly tightened her muscles, prepared to fight. Tracking the woman's movements through narrowed eyes, she watched as she spoke again to the man, her words too quiet to be heard, and he nodded and left, opening a door into a back room and stepping inside. The lady turned back to her duty, but not before giving Xiang a final, unfathomable blue-eyed stare.

Xiang swallowed, her previous anxieties and worries rushing up on her once more. She clenched her hands together into fists.

What was happening? Why had the woman shown them such hostility? Who was the man she had been speaking to?

So many unanswered questions.

Any one of these people could be her enemy, Xiang reminded herself as she turned back to Ariana. In this world, there was truly almost no one she could trust but herself.

Xiang leaned down so she could speak quietly to Ariana without fear of being overheard. "Did you hear that?" she whispered.

Ariana remained in a neutral position, her head still lowered over her plate, but she replied, her voice also lowered to a quiet whisper. "Yes."

"Did you hear what they said?"

Ariana hesitated briefly. "Not very well. But I don't trust a hair on either one of their heads. Be on guard, Xiang. Be on guard for whatever may happen."

Xiang nodded and sat back, forcing herself to relax, but nothing could ease the tension in her mind and body. The previous sense of safety she had felt had left, to be replaced by a cold wariness.

_I knew this would happen. We'll never be safe, not anywhere!_

She bent her head, her dark, sodden hair falling across her face, choking down her emotions with difficulty.

It wouldn't do her any good to be distracted. She needed to stay on guard, as Ariana had told her. She needed to be prepared.

_Stay focused. Stay focused._

Outside, another thunderclap roared, louder than any of the others, and in a dazzling moment an electric-blue branch of lightning ripped the skies apart in a violent temper, seizing the clouds andtearing them to shreds in a burst of blazing blue light, and the hungry snarl of thunder seared the air.

The lights in the restaurant flickered wildly once, twice--and then shut off, plunging the room into utter and complete darkness.

Instantly, the terrified shrieks of the diners rose, high and keening, into the air.

Xiang was on her feet in an instant, her night vision flickering to life in the darkness. A scream rose in her own throat, but she suppressed it, calm in the chaos that had slammed over the humans.

Across the table, Ariana too was standing, her eyes no longer dark but a glowing amber, like a wolf's, as she scanned the room with sharp night vision.

She whirled around in a sharp movement and looked straight at Xiang. Her eyes widened with a sudden warning--_Look out! _

Xiang was given no time to scream before two large hands slammed down over her mouth. Fear threatened to overwhelm her, but her fighting instinct kicked in, powered by a new, ferocious rage she had never before experienced.

Relying on pure instinct, she turned and shoved her elbow as hard as she could into her attacker's stomach, digging it in viciously.

Letting out a cry of pain, he stumbled and let go for a moment, then lunged for her again, his face suffused with fury.

In an instant, Ariana was behind him, her leg snapping out toward his back. He lurched forward as if he'd been shot from a cannon, crashing heavily into the table. There was a sickening thud as his head hit the surface. Ariana bent down swiftly and hauled him half-upright, twisting his arms hard behind his back.

Her eyes, wolf-amber in the darkness, were consumed by a feral viciousness that she usually did not display. Her pale face was sharp and angular, twisted in dark anger.

Xiang stepped closer to her, again concerned and wary all at once. "Ariana..."

"Watch out!"

Xiang whirled around and punched a fist out before her, catching the jaw of the person who had snuck up behind her with a sharp crack. The person staggered backwards with a scream of pain, falling against the wooden desk.

"Who are you?" Xiang hissed, hauling the person upright by the collar. She scanned the face in an instant, and gasped.

It was the young woman who had been standing behind the desk.

"That's right," she snarled, her voice oddly twisted; her jaw was perhaps broken. She drew away a trickle of blood on her chin and reached into her apron pocket, pulling out a gun. She raised it and pointed it at Xiang's chest, and she heard a click as her finger tightened.

The man whom Ariana held captive did the same, pointing his gun at Ariana.

Xiang stared at the woman's sneering face, her eyes bright with glee, the barrel of the gun trained on her. Her face lay blank and motionless, but inside her thoughts ran rampant and wild with uncontrollable fear, tangling together as her survival instinct shot to the surface.

"This gun is loaded with a vial of animal tranquilizer," the woman spat, her bloodied mouth moving awkwardly. "Once we shoot you with this, you won't feel any pain. The School will be glad to hear that we recaptured two recombinant DNA life-forms."

_The School._

The memory of those two words brought back thirteen years' worth of pain and bitter memories, and the combined force it all came skyrocketing to Xiang's consciousness.

Xiang wasted no time. She brought her leg up in a sudden swift kick, catching the woman sharply in the chest. The waitress dropped like a stone, coughing and retching on the floor, and Xiang leaped onto a nearby table, snapping out her wings in full size.

All over the darkened restaurant, the virtually blind diners screamed as they felt the motion, already frightened out of their wits by the sounds of the fight that had ensued before.

"Come on, Ariana!" Xiang cried, and she beat her wings once, soaring across the room toward the door that lay beyond the desk.

Folding her wings as she flew through the doorway, she shot upwards a flight of wooden stairs, half-running, half-flying. On the top landing was a door framed by metal, and desperately, she yanked it open and burst through.

She was outside.

Xiang folded her arms across her chest and looked around her, shivering in the sudden cold and quiet. It had stopped raining, but the storm still raged, filling the air with its electric power. She took a few tentative steps across the rooftop, the wind ruffling her flight feathers.

For a moment, her panic and her fear and her anger drained away from her as she stood there, looking out across the roof to the storm-ridden skies.

Then the sound of pounding feet burst upon her hearing, and Ariana tore out onto the roof in wolf form, morphing fluidly as she ran toward Xiang.

"They're coming," she said hoarsely. "They're from the School and they know who we are. Fly away, Xiang! I'll take care of them."

"No!" Xiang's voice came out sharp with anger; Ariana glanced at her in surprise. "I'm _not_ leaving you behind like last time, Ariana! This time, _I'm going to fight with you_!"

"How sweet; you can fight and die together."

There was no mistaking the cold, scornful voice of the woman. They both turned to see her climbing slowly up the last steps toward the door, stepping out onto the rooftop.

Out in the clarity of light, her injuries were visible. Her pale blond hair had been ripped free of its bun, her uniform had been torn beyond compare, and her bloodied jaw shifted awkwardly. Her blue eyes gleamed with a deranged, insane light, and she pointed the tranquilizer gun at them.

The man came up behind her, his gun also raised and directed at the two mutants. In the light, Xiang recognized him: he had been the man the waitress had been speaking to before.

"There's nowhere to run," the woman said sweetly. "Two adults against two small, mutated children. You can give yourself up nicely, now, if you don't want to get hurt."

"Yeah _right_," Ariana sneered. "You underestimate us, as usual. You're just pathetic little _normal _humans. So you can go ahead and tell the School to send us opponents who can actually fight better than a toddler. The way you 'fought' us downstairs? Really."

Listening to Ariana's bold words, Xiang suddenly had a flash of memory--watching Jinlong stand up for the Chinese flock time after time again back at the Chinese School, listening to his fearless insults to the boss, never frightened for himself, only his flock.

She swallowed. _He died so that we could live. I'm not going to die, not now. _

"Technology can defeat mere strength in this new age," the woman said, her blue eyes hard and cold.

"We were _made _from technology, duh!" Ariana shouted before whipping into wolf form, swifter than a blink. She rushed down upon the woman with every ounce of force she possessed, knocking the tranquilizer gun from her hand.

"Xiang, get the other one!" she shouted, morphing briefly back into a girl.

Xiang gave a powerful downstroke of her wings and rushed at the man at once, snapping her legs out so she landed feet-first, knocking his feet out from underneath him as she kicked at his knees. Stunned, he fell to the ground, the gun clattering from his grip.

Xiang looked down at him with a new, cold contempt. How dare the School do such abominable things? This pathetic servant of the School deserved to be beaten, deserved to be defeated for every wicked thing he had ever done.

"Still think you can win?" Xiang hissed down at the two prostrate humans. "As if!"

The woman raised her head from the gravel, her mangled, bloodied jaw shifting.

"The School--will always win," she ground out in a rasping voice. "As you're about to see."

Suddenly, in a sharp snakelike movement, she grabbed for the gun that lay at Ariana's feet and pulled the trigger, shooting the vial from the barrel--_straight for Xiang_.

The resounding shot echoed around the rooftop like a signal from a death bell.

"_Xiang_!" Ariana screamed.

Uttering a horrified scream, Xiang saw only the vial speeding toward her, carrying her death, aimed straight for her.

She stumbled and ran, terror pulsing through her mind, stepping backwards as fast as she could---

---_right off the rooftop_.

* * *

**Ooh, a cliffhanger! Yay!**

**Will Xiang survive or not? Are they both really being tracked down by the School? Why do they both keep having these strange pains?**

**Please make Nighty happy and review!!!  
**


	10. Dark Wings

All breath was torn from her throat as Xiang hurtled toward the ground, plummeting like a stone from the rooftop.

Wind rushed past her ears in that dazzling second, and she faintly heard the screams of Ariana high above her, nearly drowned out by the thunderous sound of her own pulse in her ears.

The vial sped toward her like a bullet of death, aiming for her throat, aiming to capture her for the School, aiming to end her life.

_No. No._

Even as the desperate words filled her mind, she felt the energy of her falling, her movement and the vial's movement, with a keen sensitivity, and she knew surely that the inevitable moment would come, when she would come crashing down into the street to her devastating end.

Suddenly the white-hot pain in her center, which had lain dormant for so long, flared once more to life. This time it blazed fire, drowning out everything else in her vision with white starbursts of agony, and she felt a massive energy clouding around her, sucking and absorbing into her as she fell. She cried out, feeling the hot pain drilling into her very core, reinforced by waves and waves of energy.

And suddenly...she was _not falling_.

Xiang opened her tight-shut eyes, feeling her body seeming to be surrounded by an aura of strength and power, flooding into her, filling her with unlimited energy.

She was _floating_.

She looked down, seeing the street gradually rising up to meet her feet, her wings still motionless and folded beneath the sweatshirt. Gently, her shoes touched the asphalt, and she landed soundlessly.

Beside her, the vial of tranquilizer drifted down and landed delicately on the street as if it were a feather. The speed with which it _should_ have landed, according to its weight and trajectory, had gone.

Xiang stood there for a moment, gazing down at the ground in silent disbelief and shock. Her mind worked furiously, recalling the way she had floated down toward the ground, attempting to work out an explanation for all of this.

What had just happened had defied all rules of gravity and physics.

What _had _happened?

She lifted her head, looking upwards, to see Ariana and the two people from the School gazing down at her from over the side of the wall surrounding the rooftop, their jaws slack in disbelief.

Ariana grinned down at her and pumped her fist up and down in victory. "Yeah, bird girl!"

The woman backed away, swallowing in fear. Her blue eyes flicked wildly around the rooftop as if she was searching for an answer. "That wasn't supposed to happen," she muttered. "What was going on...? It doesn't make sense...."

"Well, it makes perfect sense to me," Ariana snapped. "The School just failed--again. Point two for us!"

Xiang spread her teal-gray wings, surprised at the energy that had filled her body. She felt wide-awake and full of movement. Running a few steps, she stroked powerfully and lifted up into the air, landing with a slight skidding motion on the roof.

Both the woman and the man from the School were nervously retreating towards the door that led downstairs into the restaurant, their eyes wide as they realized that they had underestimated the people they had set out to capture.

"Oh no you don't!" snapped Xiang, and she leaped forward, seizing the woman by the wrist. The woman stared at her in wild terror.

"Not you!" she moaned. "You can steal motion! You can take that from us! No one has ever taken your records--no one knows anything about you two! What more can you do against the School?"

Xiang's eyes widened, and she and Ariana shared a brief glance of suspicion.

"'Steal motion'?" Ariana inquired carefully. "Come again?"

The man, whom Ariana was holding captive, flapped his hands frantically. "We don't know," he gibbered, cowering pathetically. "Don't hurt us! Don't tell the School! They'd kill us!"

Xiang stared at them, completely devoid of mercy. They had wanted to _kill _her, and now the begged for her mercy? How could they act so cruelly to children?

Apparently Ariana shared the same thoughts, because her lip was curling in distaste. "Frankly, I couldn't care less about what the School would do to you now, you pair of spineless traitors," she spat. "But you can tell us what we need to know--and maybe we won't shoot you down with those tranquilizer guns of yours like you were going to do to Xiang."

"How did you find us?" Xiang demanded, tightening her grip on the woman's wrist.

Trembling, the woman reached up to one eye and drew the pale lid back as far as it would go. Something clear and circular popped out of her eye onto her shaking palm, and she handed it to Xiang.

"Contacts...?" Ariana leaned over Xiang's shoulder, frowning.

Upon closer inspection, the contact were crisscrossed with a tiny gridwork of green lines, darker on the inner side. Xiang carefully held the contact up to her eye and looked through it. She gasped aloud--the world had gone darker, and the trembling woman standing in front of her had suddenly transformed into a shapeless form of glowing red.

"It's a radar." The woman's voice shook. "The School developed these radar contacts so we could detect any recombinant DNA life-forms. Normal humans show up red on the radar, but those who aren't show up a different color."

"Take yours out, too!" Ariana commanded the man, and he hastened to remove his own contacts.

Xiang lowered the small circle from her eye. "Who's 'we'?"

The woman hesitated, shaking her head back and forth. Finally she answered, "Those who the School employs. They employ everyone to keep a lookout for any possible escaped mutants; anyone and everyone. People whom they suspect will be least likely to be discovered. Even a few of the janitors in elementary schools wear these radar contacts."

Xiang stared at her, disturbed beyond words.

"Why do they do what the School tells them to do?" Ariana demanded.

"It's all power status," the woman whimpered. "Corporations who have smaller companies, which fund and found things like parks, schools, facilities, libraries and manufacture items. The School is a controlling force. If anything displeases them, they have the power to eliminate it, because the force behind it is..."

She suddenly halted in the middle of her sentence, as if her voice had been cut off. Her eyes widened and she shut her mouth tightly.

"Go on," said Ariana with forced patience. She picked up the tranquilizer gun and waved it, a silent warning.

The woman swallowed in fear, and her face paled. In a shaking voice, she whispered:

"_Itex_."

"What is Itex?" Ariana snapped.

"A vast, enormous force," the woman sobbed, "controlling every single School in the world. They are the ones with the power. They decided everything."

She covered her face with her hands, unable to go on.

Xiang and Ariana immediately whipped their heads around to glance at each other at this piece of crucial information.

"What happens if you disobey Itex and the School?" Xiang ventured slowly.

"Punishment," gasped the man, looking around him in fear. "Of the worst kind. They have the most advanced technology in the world, and they can do anything. They can strip you of your identity and destroy your life. _Everyone_ is a slave to Itex."

Xiang stared at her in cold silence, her pulse thrumming in her ears as the chill storm-winds teased and parted the strands of her hair.

Did the School truly have _this _much power? Was there no one in the world she could trust?

"So what?" Ariana spat at them. "Itex may have a lot of power, but you're all cowards and fools for following them. I thought that since you were all grown-ups, you would be able to take responsibility for what goes on in your country. Instead, you're condemning it to a state of even more destruction than it already bears."

The adults continued to sob, harder.

Xiang had little to no pity for them at all. She could tell that they weren't sorry that they were helping Itex, they were simply upset that they had been found out and were most likely going to be punished. Feeling an unfamiliar surge of satisfaction, she turned away from the two adults.

_They deserve whatever Itex chooses for them as punishment. In the end, every one of them is selfish._

Ariana took the radar contacts and stored them carefully in her pack, then turned back to the two, her dark eyes narrowed.

"Is there any reason why we shouldn't just push both of you off this rooftop and watch you splatter?" she hissed, her voice completely devoid of mercy.

The two backed up, their hands held in weak defense before them, a note of hysterical fear entering their eyes.

"P-please," breathed the woman. "It wasn't our fault. Itex--"

Xiang's teeth gritted audibly against each other. "I'm sick of your excuses!" she burst out. "Whatever you did was entirely of your own free will, you cowards!" She rounded on them, feeling the new anger rising up in her. "You didn't stop to think that your actions might put innocent people in danger. All you ever thought of were yourselves, so don't come here and tell us that it was all Itex's fault! You're to blame just as much as they are, because you were spineless enough to listen to them!"

"Which is why," Ariana said coldly, "we're going to deal with you first, before Itex can."

In the end, Ariana and Xiang locked them in a storeroom in the restaurant and went downstairs where the diners had begun to stir and move about, all in a state of nervous agitation. One of them had called the police.

"Good," Ariana told them. "When the police come, you can tell them that two people who are now locked in the back room attempted to attack us during the blackout, and tried to rob us and began a violent fight. I'm sure the police will have something to say to that."

Many of the diners were in wholehearted agreement, upset and angered over their experience. Many of them had been extremely frightened in the darkness when the fight had commenced. Several were preparing to sue the restaurant.

And before they could be asked too many questions, or interrogated about their information, Xiang and Ariana left quietly, closing the door soundlessly behind them.

------

"Well, that was wonderful," Ariana muttered as they trudged back across the street, hoods pulled up over their heads.

"Everywhere we go, the School finds us," Xiang murmured, gazing down at the small radar contact she held in her palm.

"We can't keep running and hiding!" Ariana slumped against a brick wall, ramming her fist in anger against it. Xiang grabbed her arm, and she lowered her voice. "This is pointless! At this rate, it'll take us ages to get to Maximum, because we have to keep stopping and fight off whatever the School has sent to us!"

A thought struck Xiang. "What if--what if the School is tracking us? What if the School knows we're looking for Maximum Ride, and _they're _trying to find her too?"

Ariana hissed through her teeth. "You're right! Then we would be leading them right to what they want! And the last thing we want is to betray Maximum."

The two girls stared at one another as the rain ticked on past their faces, shocked by this new revelation.

"If everyone has a radar, and they can see us, and they relay this information to the School..." Xiang whispered.

"No." Ariana's voice was hard. "I refuse to believe that we're completely trapped. Just because the School has an advantage doesn't mean that we're going to lose! We can't lose, remember? No matter what happens!"

Xiang's heart gave a thump of despair. The School was so much stronger than they were. If they could bend the entire world population of adults to their will, weren't they certainly capable of destroying two mutants?

Ariana grasped Xiang's hands. "You won't give up, will you?" she asked anxiously.

Xiang shook her head, but her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. She dared not voice her innermost fear--that she would never be strong enough.

"Don't worry," Ariana said quietly, and Xiang saw the glimpse of the third personality that she had. "Even if they find us again, I won't let them hurt either of us."

Xiang let out a shuddering breath, and nodded. "Okay."

How could she ever put words to the pain inside her, the pain of running and hiding, the pain of never knowing the life of a normal thirteen-year-old, the pain of feeling weak and helpless and frightened all the time?

The rain faded as they continued down the sidewalk, cars zooming down the street to their right, buildings and houses bobbing past on their left. Xiang gripped the bars of a low gate as she walked past another building.

Suddenly the brass plate beside the gate caught her eye: _Pearson Elementary School._

Xiang stiffened, her eye widening as fear pounded through her. "Ariana, a School!" she hissed, jabbing a finger at the plate. Would they be found yet again?

Ariana swiveled about in alarm to glance at the plate--and unexpectedly burst into laughter.

Xiang watched in bemused puzzlement as Ariana bent over in hysterical giggles, clutching her sides. "I'm sorry," the wolf-girl gasped, straightening again. "It's just--" She collapsed into laughter once more.

Xiang felt a grin crack her face, though for what reason, she didn't know. Her friend's laughter was contagious, and soon she too was clutching her sides and leaning weakly against the wall.

Ariana stood up again, her lips twitching as she tried not to burst into laughter once more. "Xiang, not that type of School," she explained. "These are normal schools--y'know, where children go to learn things."

Xiang looked again through the bars of the gate. Yes--she could see a small playground, with children running up and down and all over it. It looked like great fun.

A pang pulsed through her as she watched the humans playing. If only Jiaxing and Fong had had the opportunity to see a playground, and play on it.

But the School had transformed them, twisted them, mutated them, making them something they weren't. They weren't pure human anymore, and their genetic material would always mark them as separate from the rest of the world. Watching the normal children, she wondered if her life could have been like this, carefree and playful and free of danger.

Ariana nudged her. "Look what's happening over there."

Xiang gazed in the direction Ariana indicated, and saw a boy, perhaps nine years old, standing a little way off from the playground and the other children, holding a ball and facing two larger kids, perhaps twelve years old. Their conversation swept upon her keen ears like a wave.

"Give me that ball," one of the kids demanded, thrusting out a pudgy hand toward the small child.

The boy hesitated, shaking his head. "Mrs. Hart said that we're not allowed to give our class playground equipment to other classes!" he protested. "Besides, it's just because you lost the ball you were playing with."

"The teacher's gonna kill us when recess is over and we don't have the ball," the big kid insisted, stepping closer. "She won't know if you just give us yours. Besides, you're just in third grade, your teacher's not gonna care if you just lose your ball."

"Yeah," agreed his friend. "Hand it over."

The boy tightened his arms around the ball, looking scared and defiant, and shook his head, backing away.

"I said give it!" The big kids shoved him, and the little boy let out a cry as he was unbalanced and fell heavily to his knees in the grass.

As if by some unspoken signal, both Xiang and Ariana rushed forward at once, hauled themselves up the brick wall, leaped down onto the other side, and raced across the field toward the children, angered.

The bullies didn't seem to notice as the two mutants approached. One of them was picking up the ball, which the little boy had dropped, and snorting contemptuously. "Yeah right, trying to stand up to us? You're just a little runt. You're too weak."

Xiang slowed as she approached the two older children and the small boy hunched over in the grass. Her heart went out to the child at once, and she felt a surge of anger shake her. She, too, had often felt herself weak and helpless, like the little boy.

Seeing some of herself in the child suddenly made her feel very protective of him. How dare these older children gang up on him, simply because he was younger and weaker?

"Thanks for the ball," mocked the other boy, and, tossing it up in the air, he and his friend began to walk away from the whimpering child in the grass.

With the speed of a hunting wolf, Ariana whipped in front of them, blocking their path. Slowly, she leaned in until her dark, black-rimmed eyes were mere inches from their terror-filled ones.

"_Give-- me--the ball_," she hissed, pure malice edging her tone.

It was all over in a second. The boys dropped the ball at her feet and ran screaming towards the playground as fast as they could.

The dark cloud cleared from Ariana's eyes and she threw her head back, laughing like a child.

Xiang looked up at her in quiet admiration for her skill to inspire fear. Then she remembered the little boy, and dropped down to her knees in the grass beside him.

He stared up at her in terror. His dusty pale blond hair stuck up all over, and his eyes were very blue, like a little animal's.

_He's almost the same age as Fong._

Xiang reached out her arms to him. "I won't hurt you," she said softly. "Are you okay? Stand up so I can see your knees."

Slowly, the little boy rose to his feet. His hands were streaked with dirt and grass stains, and so were his shorts. His knees were slightly skinned and reddish.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Those boys were very scary, weren't they?"

The boy sniffled a little and nodded, and she brushed the dirt from his shirt and knees. Caring for the child, she suddenly felt as if she were among her flock once more. To be close to a little child once more brought forth memories of playing with Fong, or rocking baby Jiaxing to sleep.

Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them back. "You're all right now," she heard herself say comfortingly to the boy, as she had said so often in the past to her younger flock members.

"Nice ball," Ariana called from behind her, and she turned to see the older hybrid kicking the ball up and down, bouncing it off her knees. She came toward them and handed the ball to the boy. "I think this belongs to you."

The boy grasped the ball in shaky hands. "Thanks," he whispered, hugging it absently to his chest.

"What's your name?" Ariana asked.

The boy looked cautiously at her before replying softly, "Michael."

"Why don't you play with the other children, Michael?" Xiang asked softly, gesturing to the playground where the other kids were playing.

Michael looked uncertain, and rocked back and forth. Finally he said in a voice almost too quiet to hear: "They don't like me."

_He's an outsider, too._

"Why not?" Xiang asked, putting her arm around his shoulders.

"Because I'm small," the boy whispered. "Everyone's taller than me, so they beat me up and take my stuff. But if I tell on them, everyone calls me a tattletale. So no one plays with me at recess."

Xiang's heart broke for him. He, too, was lonely. Those in the peerage shunned him for being weak, and he found it hard to make friends. He didn't have any friends the way his classmates did.

"I know what that feels like," she told him.

The small boy looked up at her in surprise. His child's eyes were clear and blue between his long, pale lashes.

"But you're big," he said wonderingly. "You're tall, so nobody beats you up." He looked to Ariana. "And you scared off those bullies. Nobody must scare you, either, or call you mean names."

"Just because you're big doesn't mean no one makes fun of you," Xiang said softly. "People try to beat us up, too, and they're really mean to us. Wherever we go, people are mean to us. But we try to be as strong as we can."

She touched his dusty hair. "Don't let those bullies scare you, okay, Michael?"

The little boy nodded. "Okay."

"Yeah, those two were just big sissies," Ariana agreed, skipping up behind Xiang. "Did you see the looks on their faces when I chased them off? Priceless!"

Michael giggled a little. "Yeah." His face fell slightly, and he tightened his arms around the ball. "I just wish they would all leave me alone, but then I'm scared that no one will play with me."

"Oh, that's not true," Xiang said quickly, standing up. "_We'll _play with you! We'll play ball together! All right?"

Michael's face brightened with happiness, and he smiled eagerly. "Yeah!"

Xiang felt herself smiling in return. "Okay! Throw the ball to me!"

Ariana skipped to the side. "Me too!"

The ball was thrown back and forth between the three of them, Xiang and Michael laughing uproariously as Ariana twisted around in mock confusion, pretending to miss the ball and search for it, sometimes looking for it in the oddest places ("Did it fall down my shoes? Hm, got to check!").

Xiang, watching Michael's shining blue eyes and rosy face as he ran back and forth on his short little legs to catch the ball, felt peaceful and happy. It warmed her heart to know that she had helped this child, who was an outsider, like she and Ariana were.

"Watch out!" Michael cried as he threw the ball forward at Ariana, giggling.

"Whoops!" Ariana laughed as she caught the ball and pretended to fall from the impact, rolling backwards over the ground and finally coming right-side up, her hood lopsided over her head.

Michael shrieked with laughter as she pretended to twirl about dizzily, wobbling comically back and forth. "Where's Michael? Where did he go?" She grabbed Xiang. "Is that you, Michael? Hm, you seem to have gotten a lot taller..."

Michael laughed and jumped up and down. "No, no! _I'm _Michael!" he chanted.

Suddenly, a loud bell rang from the red brick building behind the playground. Startled, Xiang turned to watch as the children in the playground immediately stopped what they were doing and ran, all at once, like a flock of birds toward the doors and lined up. Several adults stood up from the benches and walked towards the lines of children, blowing whistles.

Michael gave a start of surprise. "Oh! It's time to go inside now." He began to back away, waving to them, laughter still lingering in his eyes. "See you!"

"Michael!" A cross-looking young woman marched across the field toward Xiang, Ariana, and Michael, a scowl planted on her face and a whistle dangling around her neck. "Hurry up! It's time to go inside!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Aberford," Michael murmured, lowering his head. Xiang saw fear flash across his face; it was clear that he was not liked by the teacher, either.

"Well, come on," she snapped, then seemed to notice Ariana and Xiang. "And _who_ are _you_?" she inquired sharply, putting her hands on her hips.

At the sight of the adult, every single memory of the geneticists at the School rushed to consciousness in Xiang's mind, and her instinct surged up. She eyed the woman warily. "We were playing with him," she replied guardedly.

"Oh?" Mrs. Aberford replied, drawing out the word condescendingly. Xiang truly was beginning to dislike her. Michael stood next to the teacher, a small little pale waif with his head lowered sadly next to her imposing figure.

Ariana jumped in. "Yeah, the other kids wouldn't play with him, so _we _did," she snapped back, already on full retort mood. "You really should regulate this playground better. What sort of school is this, with one that won't even allow all its students to play together without being bullied, huh?"

Mrs. Aberford's face flushed red for a moment, but she pursed her lips and inquired angrily, "And who are you?" Her sharp eyes scanned Ariana from head to toe. "You're obviously not a student here. How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen? You're supposed to be in high school. Skipping class? Shall I call your parents? Your school?"

She swiveled around to face Xiang. "And you! Twelve? Thirteen? You don't belong here, either. I've never seen your face in this school. You must be skipping class, too!"

Xiang gritted her teeth and met her beady stare as evenly as she could, memories of the boss at the School surging through her mind. He'd had that same mean, tiny-eyed stare.

_This is why I don't really like adults._

Mrs. Aberford clucked in triumph as neither Xiang nor Ariana offered up an argument to her accusations. "Just as I thought. But how did you get here...?"

Her voice trailed off as her gaze moved to the high, impassable wall, then back to Xiang and Ariana. Her gaze flickered between them, becoming more and more suspicious and shocked.

"How...?" she began in that piercing voice of hers, but Ariana didn't give her time to finish her sentence.

Tossing the ball back to Michael, who caught it in surprise, she turned and raced as fast as she could toward the wall, grabbing Xiang's hand and yanking her along, shouting back to the dumbstruck teacher, "See ya!"

In one bound, both of them leaped high over the wall and pelted full force down the sidewalk, attracting the stares of many passersby.

Xiang glanced back to see Michael and Mrs. Aberford running toward them; Michael with a look of awed surprise on his face, waving frantically and shouting, "Bye!"; Mrs. Aberford with an enraged expression on her bony face, running toward the gate with spindly legs.

But before she had even unlocked the gate, Xiang and Ariana were gone.

------

The two of them didn't stop running until they had left the town and hidden themselves in the safety of the nearby woods.

_Then _they collapsed against the tree trunks and laughed until their ribs couldn't take it anymore.

"Did you see the expression on that teacher's face?" Ariana cackled, slapping her knee. "Hilarious!"

"I know!" Xiang slid down to the forest floor, trying to stop the spasms of mirth racking her body. "I just hope Michael doesn't get into too much trouble. He is a really cute kid."

"Yeah." Ariana sat down cross-legged beside her and slipped her pack off her shoulders. "Ah, let's see where we are now."

She took out the map. "Well, we've gone some ways, I have to say. We're in some sort of state forest, I would guess...Hm. The river comes out right in front of us somewhere here. Let's go check it out."

A quarter of an hour later, they emerged from the forest and stepped down a layer of rocks to see the river on the map flowing past them, an enormous body of water slipping down calmly like some giant eel. It was gray-blue, darker green in some parts, rippling and wavering like a reflection, the sky mirrored on its surface.

Ariana had stopped at the edge with a look of dismay on her face. "How will I cross it?" she asked.

"Oh, no," Xiang murmured, realizing the problem. It would indeed be difficult to continue together if they went on different routes.

She crouched down slightly, unfurling her own wings, sighing as she stretched her muscles in the lukewarm sunlight. For her, it would be a simple task to fly across the river.

"Oh, Ariana," Xiang said, moving across to put her hand on her shoulder as she noticed her expression, "I'm so sorry. I wish you had wings, too...."

She trailed off as she realized that the uncomfortable expression on her friend's face had less to do with the fact that she was wingless, and rather that she seemed to be in pain.

"Give me a sec," Ariana muttered, flexing her shoulders and wincing.

"No! Not again?" Xiang asked in concern, putting her arms around her shoulders as Ariana crouched down slightly as if the pain were too great to bear.

"Ugh...I don't know what's going on...it hurts so much..."

Her voice was tight in pain, and her hands twitched erratically, as if she couldn't help herself. Her shoulders flexed agitatedly, as if she wanted to shrug off the pain.

Suddenly, in a dazzling moment, an shattering rip rent the air and Ariana let out a scream as two enormous objects burst from her back, tearing her clothes to shreds.

Xiang stumbled backwards, her arm thrown across her eyes to protect her from the onslaught of whatever had torn through Ariana's back. Slowly, she lowered her arm and crept closer.

"Ariana?" she whispered. Her friend was completely veiled from view, obscured by two enormous dark objects draped across her body.

"Ugh...."

Slowly, Ariana stood up. Then, in a sudden movement, the two objects on her back whipped out to the sides, snapping out in full shape and causing a wind to roar across Xiang's face.

Xiang stared in utter disbelief.

The two objects protruding from Ariana's back were enormous, dark-feathered, beautiful _wings_.

* * *

**Yay! Ariana developed a new skill! **

**And so did Xiang, if you remember....**

**So, there you have it. The pain they experienced culminated in the development of new skills. Can anyone guess the official name of Xiang's "steal motion" skill? **

**And the little boy Michael was actually inspired by a little boy I met at the playground at the soccer field who asked me if he could play with me. Cute little guy. He looked just the Gasman, for some strange reason.  
**

**Please, please, keep those reviews coming! I'll update if I get lots of reviews!  
**


	11. Crossing the Border At Last

Now that Ariana had wings, their mission quickened its pace and the journey seemed to slide speedily by.

She was as feeble as a baby bird trying out its first flight when she attempted to fly. Xiang, happy that there was something she could teach her friend, spent the first few hours guiding her into moving her enormous dark wings, flapping, and generally becoming accustomed to the new limbs on her back.

After Ariana finally flew for the first time, her wings twitching and flapping awkwardly but still lifting her into the sky, she laughing and gasping together in astonishment, Xiang clapping and soaring alongside her in joy, they were good to go.

Their progress through the rest of California was hasty. They avoided the towns, ate and drank sparingly, slept little, and flew as fast and as far as they could. They rested only when there were too many humans around to fly safely, for fear of being seen, or when they were too exhausted to move.

"Too bad we won't get to see San Francisco, though," sighed Ariana during the third night as the two mutants soared over San Francisco. "Well, we can see it from up here."

She had become more adept at flying, but Xiang still watched her carefully, in case her new wings happened to weaken in the middle of a flight.

"It's so beautiful," Xiang whispered, switching her gaze to the city below her for a moment.

The buildings of San Francisco, massing dark and low below her, spread out in a gridwork of shining electric lights, blazing out from the black depths of the earth. The Golden Gate Bridge shone brightly on the side, patterned with shimmering lights that burned orange and gold in her vision.

The night wind brushed against their feathers, ruffling them in a gently insisting way. Xiang hugged her arms to herself as she let her wings guide her high over the ground, knowing that the sky, _her _domain, would never betray her.

Her thoughts strayed away from the enticing bright lights of the city, focusing more quietly within her. She felt the energy pulsing through her, the movement of the rise and fall of her wings.

_Steal motion._

She hadn't been able to say why, but after the shocking incident at the restaurant, she had felt the movement around her with a far keener sensitivity than before.

Also, her pains had vanished completely, along with Ariana's.

Both of them had changed, Xiang realized, gliding over a cool breeze. The pains had been an indicator. Ariana had grown wings, and she gained the ability to....steal motion.

What did it all mean? What could have been the cause of all this? Why had they developed these abilities?

_Does this make me more of a freak than I already am?_

Xiang bit her lip, holding back tears. Why was she crying? She should be grateful about her abilities. She could experience things that no other human girl her age could.

Yet, as she watched the buildings below her, she felt a pain pierce her. How many children lay safe and sound within that shining city, asleep and dreaming, never having to know the hardships of a hunted runaway?

And how many more, in that shining city, were employed by the School and were her enemies?

_It's all Itex's fault._

Xiang beat her wings angrily, surging through the air ahead of Ariana, her hands tightly clenched. All around her, she felt the ripple of movement like currents.

------

By the end of the week, they crossed the California-Arizona border.

"_Yes_!" shouted Xiang, punching a fist through the air in excitement as she zipped through the air. "We did it! We did it!"

Below her, cars swarmed busily down the highway, next to where an enormous bright blue sign proclaimed: _Welcome to Arizona!_

"Yeah, yeah, Arizona!" Ariana bubbled, swooping clumsily down to join her. She and Xiang managed to slap high fives while still in midair.

Xiang smiled and breathed in deeply, feeling the stress of the week roll off her like water droplets off a windowpane.

They had done it. They were in the same state as Maximum Ride, and with any luck, they would find her.

"It's the Grand Canyon State, you know," noted Ariana, reading the fact off the welcome sign. She kicked her feet and shot forward to read another sign posted ahead of the welcome board. "Tipisco, that's a town here...blah blah blah...."

"Do you think Maximum's there?" Xiang inquired, stroking her wings once and rising on the back of a thermal.

"Hmm...maybe," Ariana mused. "We'll see."

The sun felt comfortingly warm on Xiang's feathers, like the reassuring touch of someone trying to console her. In the light of day, her spirits soared in joy and anticipation of what was to come.

She flew faster, exhilarated, spurred on by her joy, the pure sweet bliss of flying brimming in her heart.

_I wonder what Maximum will look like? And whether her flock is anything like mine? And if there are little children, or someone my age...._

"I wonder what the flock is like," Ariana said out loud, mirroring Xiang's thoughts exactly. "If they're nice, or mean, or stuff."

Xiang nodded in agreement, angling slightly downward a few degrees.

"Jeb told me a little about Max and the flock when we were back at the School," Ariana continued, paddling her feet to push herself forward through the air; she was still an awkward flyer. "He says there are six of them. Three of 'em are girls, the others are boys."

"Oh," Xiang mumbled, forging a path through the sky. Her own flock had had only five people. She wondered briefly why the Chinese School had failed to create a sixth member for her flock to mirror Maximum's.

"I asked Jeb if she was like me," Ariana went on. "He said that she was more serious, and really tough in a different way. She'd do anything for her flock."

Xiang's heart thumped in sorrow. "That sounds just like Jinlong and Yueyin," she murmured. "They, too, did everything for the flock--even dying, in the end."

Ariana reached out carefully and patted her on the shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Xiang. I know they were like your family, and they were everything to you."

"They were."

A silence settled over the air, and they flew without speaking for a period of time, letting the wind billowing from their wings fill the quiet.

Then, hesitantly, Xiang asked, "Do you know who your parents are?"

"I'm not sure." Ariana's words were thoughtful. "Jeb--was always sort of like my dad. He cared for me like a dad and he protected me from the School like a dad. The other scientists were like a bunch of uncles--really nice uncles though. But, genetically, I have four parents--they took a wolf embryo and fused it genetically with a human's, and made me."

"Oh," Xiang murmured. "You seem to have had a happy childhood."

She fought down the bitterness and sorrow rising within her. How fortunate Ariana was, to have known her father!

A father who protected her, and cared for her, and treated her as his daughter, no matter what she was.

A father who accepted and loved her.

_If my father knew what I was right now, would he love me too?_

Emptiness seemed to gnaw at her heart, and she felt the absence of her parents like a wound.

But, perhaps, she was better off not knowing who her parents had been. Suppose they were people she didn't like? Suppose they were people who wouldn't love her if they knew she had wings?

"I...never quite knew who my parents were." Her words were quiet and stilted, as if to herself. She didn't know why she'd said them, but her mind urged her to continue. "I don't really care, anyway. But Yueyin said that she thought her parents were two of the geneticists at the School, who donated their own baby to the School."

"Oh," Ariana said sympathetically. "That's really horrible."

"I don't _need _other parents, anyways," Xiang said, angrily swiping the back of her hand across her eyes. "I have only two parents in the whole world right now--Jinlong was my father, and Yueyin was my mother. I had two siblings--Jiaxing and Fong. They're the only family I ever needed."

Tears dropped from her eyes, streaked back by the wind, drying her cheeks almost instantly.

Ariana awkwardly put her arm around her while trying to stay afloat, her black wings beating furiously. "I understand. You're lucky, to have had such good parents."

"I know." Xiang let out a shuddering sigh. "I just wish that I could be assured that my birth parents were just as good, too."

"I think that it doesn't matter, who your birth parents were," Ariana told her. "The people who cared for you and loved you are your parents. Nothing else matters."

"Yueyin and Jinlong were with me ever since I was a baby," Xiang recalled softly. "The geneticists put us all in one big crate, and when we became older, we got put into separate crates. But we grew up together."

"_Crates_?" exclaimed Ariana, so sharply that Xiang glanced at her in surprise. "They put growing children in _crates_?"

"Yes. Dog crates."

Ariana's mouth twitched for a few seconds in barely restrained fury and Xiang uneasily watched her, wondering if she would burst out in anger.

Finally, Ariana spat, "I now officially hate the whitecoats even more than I already do."

"No...it wasn't that bad," Xiang hastened to say. "It was a bit cramped in there, and hard, but all that mattered was that we were together. They always tried to hurt us, but Jinlong and Yueyin would protect us as well as they could, and they chased away the bad dreams we had at night. My earliest memory is of being held by Yueyin, while Jinlong was sitting next to her in our crate, and they were both smiling at me..."

She faltered.

"I felt so safe and secure when they were with me," she whispered.

_They were brave, and I am not. How can I ever aspire to be as strong as they were?_

"Your childhood was pretty bad?" Ariana asked quietly.

"Yes. My flock was the only thing that was good. I can't believe they died...that the scientists could take even that away from me."

Xiang felt the last tear trickle down her cheek, then the wind dashed it hastily away.

"The School and Itex are cruel," she said aloud. "In this world, the only people we can truly trust are each other."

"Yes." Ariana gave a firm nod of her head. "But, Xiang, please, don't be too sad over your flock."

Xiang turned a sad, puzzled face to her friend.

_But how can I not? They were _everything _to me._

"No, I don't mean that you should forget them," Ariana explained. "Jeb told me that he once watched someone die, someone who was very close to him, and he said that he never told him that he loved him. It was too late."

Xiang nodded silently, thinking of that dreadful, fateful day when the boss of the School had called her flock into the conference hall and informed them about the termination law. It seemed so far away now.

"Jeb said that the death of that person lay heavy on his heart for a long time," Ariana continued quietly. "But he told him in his mind that he'd always loved him, and he was so sorry, and wherever he was now, he hoped he was happy. And Jeb said that he could feel that person _with _him, sometimes, standing at his shoulder, as if he hadn't really died, after all."

"Thank you, Ariana," Xiang said softly. "I hope that wherever my flock is right now, they're happy, and they can see me and know that I'm happy too."

She closed her eyes, feeling the wind skimming her flight feathers, feeling the energy shifting in currents all around her.

_Jinlong, Yueyin, Fong, Jiaxing--can you hear me? _

She slowly opened her eyes. The sky was a clear blue all around her, and Arizona bloomed beneath her. There were trees in the distance, and mountain ranges.

_I love you all so much._

There was a bird, circling over the peaks, riding on the wind as freely as she did herself.

_I hope, wherever you are, you're free and safe and happy._

Her eyes followed the bird, tracing its confident, strong flight through the sky. It was blue gray, with black-tipped wings and very lean, some sort of hawk or falcon.

It soared, strong and powerful, over the mountains, circling again and again. Its wild power and beauty were intimidating and awesome all at once.

A blue-gray hawk...

...a Chinese Goshawk.

The same bird that Jinlong's DNA had been taken from.

Xiang's eyes flickered wide open in surprise as she gasped.

"Xiang?" Ariana was looking at her now. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she murmured. With a fast-beating heart, she scanned the skies for the bird, but he was gone.

She was sure of it, though. No matter how strange it had been, she knew with every fiber of her being that the bird bore the same wings as the beloved leader of her flock.

She raised her eyes to the sky, a sudden peace flowing over her like sunshine.

_My flock--does this mean you are with me?_

Far off in the distance, she heard the hawk cry out once more, his call harsh and piercing, as if in reply.

-------

"Time to set up camp," Ariana concluded as the two mutants circled over the dark trees of a state park below them. "I'm about ready to drop out of the sky."

"All right," Xiang agreed. She folded her wings first so her friend could see how she did it, dropping smoothly from the sky, spreading them before she hit the ground so she glided safely down.

Ariana followed her, shooting like a rocket from the sky, flapping her wings rather awkwardly and skidding to a landing. Xiang caught her arm so she wouldn't fall.

"Thanks," Ariana said, grinning as she tucked away her wings. "This flying business is rather hard, isn't it?"

"You'll get used to it," Xiang assured her, smoothing her sweatshirt over the slits in the back. "It's all instinct. Your wings will soon get used to flying."

"I hope so," Ariana said, starting off down the trail that led deep into the trees of the state park.

What Xiang loved about America was the number of state parks and the abundance of natural beauty. Trees, sky, mountains, lakes, streams, birds. Back in the cities of China where the School had once stood, there had been little of such beauty.

But, then again, the School had been situated in one of the most densely populated and urbanized cities in China. In other areas of China, perhaps, there was beautiful natural scenery.

Xiang pulled herself high up into a tree, settling down on a firm branch. She relaxed against the trunk, knowing that here, they wouldn't be found.

Her teal-gray wings half-open, she watched the gathering dusk through sleepy eyes as tinges of vibrant violets and reds and oranges painted the sky with their brightness.

Almost ready to drift off into sleep, she was sharply startled awake as Ariana suddenly bolted upright on a nearby tree and hissed: "Someone's here!"

"What?!"

In an instant, Xiang was wide awake, crouching forward on her branch, her wings held out in readiness for flight as her heart raced, pumping adrenaline through the rest of her body.

"Where? Where?" she whispered to Ariana frantically, who sat motionless in the tangled branches across from her.

"There," Ariana breathed, very slowly stretching out her arm to point to the woodlands rolling down to their right. In the dark, the densely massed trees were nearly impenetrable.

Xiang strained her eyes, trying to distinguish the outlines of figures from trees. In the darkness, she picked out several figures: one, two, three, four, five.

Six?

No, she was sure of it, there were five. Her heart started to pound wildy as she imagined their purpose for being here.

Innocent state park rangers?

Or more trackers sent from the School?

"Who _are _they?" she breathed to Ariana, scarcely moving her lips.

"I don't know," the wolf-girl whispered back, "but they smell funny. Like..." She shook her head. "Never mind."

"Let's approach them. Quietly," Xiang hissed, already beginning to creep down the length of her branch.

Her head felt perfectly clear. Her fear, instead of clouding her thoughts in panic like usual, was transforming into anger, lending strength and alertness to her.

_If they're from the School, I'll show them no mercy. They killed my flock! _

She crouched in the branches just outside of the clearing where the figures stood, every sense watchful and alert. She could hear them moving below her. Speaking softly.

"Let's watch them," she murmured to Ariana, who was revealed by her gleaming wolf-eyes, sitting next to her. "If they start acting suspicious, should we jump on them and attack them? What if they're not--"

"Who the heck are _you_?"

Xiang's heart almost stopped.

Slowly, she turned around....

....and found herself staring right into the hostile, ruthless eyes of a boy.

* * *

**Dun, dun, dun! -drumrolls furiously- Things are going to get exciting now!**

**The goshawk omen idea was actually given to me by FallingSnow14, my friend. She had a dream about my story, and she was part of Maximum Ride's flock, and there was a circling hawk overhead. It matched the description of a Chinese Goshawk perfectly, though she'd never heard or seen one, and when she went back to read my story, she found that it matched the description of Jinlong's wings exactly. **

**Is that creepy or what?**

**To those of you who were wondering what Xiang's 'steal motion' skill is called, it won't be officially revealed till later. But Madeline Cullen came really, really, really close, with her smartical answer of 'manipulation of the velocity of the molecules around her'. Yay! **

**Please, keep those reviews coming if you want me to update!  
**


	12. The Flock

"I said, who the heck are you?"

Xiang felt her breath coming in stutters. The boy's dark eyes were completely pitiless, and she knew without a doubt that if given the chance, he would kill her.

For a moment, dark clouds of fear threatened to overwhelm her mind.

_No! I won't fail anyone again!_

Rage and energy powered through her system, clarity surging through her mind, and instinctively, she rammed her fist as hard as she could into the sensitive joint near his knee.

The boy's eyes widened for a moment, the brief pain diverting his mind, but that second was all that Xiang needed. She fell backwards off the branch, landing squarely on the forest floor with a mind-jarring thud, and ran.

_They're definitely from the School. Definitely!_

Her feet pounding against the wet leaves, she raced as fast as she could, putting every ounce of strength into her pumping arms and legs, trying to put as much distance possible between herself and the people behind her.

She could hear their voices, faintly, in the distance, speaking from the clearing where she'd left them:

"What was that?!"

"Girl. Attacked me."

"Who'd be out here at night except us?"

"Dunno. Let's go get her. There was another!"

Fear slithered ice-cold into her body, and she ran even faster, spreading her wings partially open so that she half stumbled, half glided over the ground.

_"There was another." Oh, Ariana, please be all right!_

Her heart was thudding so loudly that she was sure every creature in the forest would be able to hear it.

_Maybe she took to the skies. For safety._

Punning on a final burst of speed, she downstroked her wings, barely having enough room to do so, lifting herself high over the trees, every beat of her wings fanning wind into her face as she scanned the dark skies desperately for Ariana.

"Xiang!"

She soared forward to greet the figure awkwardly flapping toward her. "Ariana! Are you all right?" she whispered, catching her arms.

"I'm fine," Ariana whispered back, her black wings fluttering against the nighttime sky. She raised her nose to the air. "They smelled like...."

"I think they're from the School!" Xiang hissed urgently, unable to quell her panic. "We have to get away as fast as we can!"

"Who from?"

The cold voice spoke from behind them.

Xiang turned slowly in midair, her mind numb with dismay, fearing what she was about to see.

Only a few feet below them, several teenagers and children perched in the branches of the pine trees, glaring upwards with merciless eyes as they gripped the tree trunks, perfectly balanced.

Her mind reeled in shock. How were these human children able to withstand such heights?

How had they even been able to _get _up to the treetops, anyways?

Silently, her eyes roved from one face to another, memorizing them, observing her surroundings, in case she needed to make a quick escape.

The girl in the tree nearest to them shifted her position, her wide brown eyes as hard as steel. Long blond hair streaked with brighter blond and brown blew in the wind, and her slight frame concealed strong muscles. Her mouth twisted downwards as she glared at them. The mere angle of her posture radiated ferocity and unfriendliness.

Beside her was a tall, skinny, pale youth. The wind ruffled his feathery strawberry blond hair, and he was leaning against the branches, his gaze fixed unnervingly on a point in front of him.

On her other side was the boy who had attacked Xiang earlier. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was like a shadow, silent and watchful, crouched beside the blond girl.

A group of younger children were gathered in the lower branches. A dark-skinned, worried-looking girl with enormous brown eyes; a younger boy with spiky, ruffled blond hair and wary bright blue eyes; and a little girl, a beautiful little child, with blond curls and sweet round blue eyes like the sky.

Xiang's heart broke as she looked at the group of children. How _could _the School have corrupted such innocent young children?

"So," the blond girl said again, her voice colder than ice, "why are you here?"

She couldn't be much older than Xiang herself, judging from her height and voice. Xiang thought she was perhaps fourteen, fifteen.

Ariana spoke up. "We could ask the same of you," she snapped back. "Have you come to track us down, pawns of the School?"

The girl's brown eyes flickered momentarily, and she turned, exchanging the barest of glances with the tall dark boy on her right, and though they didn't speak, Xiang felt that the glance communicated much more than words could say.

"We don't come from the School," the girl replied warily. "Who are you?"

Xiang's hands tightened at her sides. She didn't want to reveal anything of her identity until she knew for certain who these strange youths were.

She glanced again at the group of children. The pretty dark-skinned girl had her hands to her mouth, and she was looking back and forth. The little boy had his mouth set in a firm line as he stared trustingly at the older blond girl.

And the youngest little girl...

Xiang was shocked to find that she was staring straight at her with a look of utmost concentration in her blue eyes. Her gaze hit her like an arrow, it was so piercing and focused.

The oldest girl turned to face the little child.

"Picked up anything?" Xiang heard her mutter quietly.

The little child shook her head, then switched her gaze to Ariana. Almost instantly, she let out a cry of fear, her little hands flying to her mouth.

"_That one's an Eraser_!"

"What--!" Ariana and Xiang cried out together, and then suddenly the boy dressed in dark sprang to his feet with a snarl, launching himself through the air at Ariana.

And suddenly, two enormous dark wings opened up on his back, snapping out in full form like a raven's, blotting out the moonlight.

Xiang could scarcely breathe. She stared, speechless, as the rest of the group unfolded their own wings and soared upwards to join the dark-haired boy. The moon glinted off their glossy plumage and their glowing, steady gazes.

"You...you've got wings!" she breathed.

The dark-haired boy's hand curled into a lethal fist.

"I knew it was too good to be true," he growled. "All of the Erasers being dead. They obviously kept a couple alive, just in case."

"No--wait!" Ariana exclaimed, staring at the group of mutants. "I know who you all are! Xiang!" She turned excitedly to Xiang. "This is the flock of _Maximum Ride_!"

Xiang could only stare, stunned.

_So they _aren't _from the School?_

"Well done," the blond girl snapped scornfully, her voice heavily underlined with derision. "Yes, I'm Max, and you're going to remember me as the one who kicked both of your butts halfway into next year!"

"Stop!" Xiang screamed as the dark-haired boy launched himself at Ariana, his sharp-knuckled fists punching through the air toward her.

Ariana rolled with the movement in midair, twisting backwards awkwardly and dropping like a stone into the forest floor below. Flapping her wings frantically, she rose awkwardly back up.

Enraged, Xiang whirled around to face the rest of the group. "What are you _doing_?!" she cried.

Her genuine confusion and anger must have stopped Max and the others, because they seemed to give pause.

Xiang took a few deep breaths, calming herself down. Everything was so completely _wrong_. They had found Maximum, but she had mistaken them for an enemy. Her flock didn't seem to trust either her or Ariana, and if they were enemies instead of friends, how could they hope to help them?

Max, her arms folded, soared forward in a swift, effortless movement. Xiang envied her ease of movement, feeling the energy that streamlined her powerful, beautiful wings. The feathers were various shades of tan, white, and darker brown.

"Explain yourself," Max said, scowling fiercely. "If you're not from the School, who are you?"

She nodded slightly at the tall, dark boy who had attacked Ariana. He replied with a assenting dip of his head and retreated slightly to join the rest of the flock.

Xiang swallowed, then began, speaking as fast as she could for fear that one of them would attack them again if she didn't make herself and her purpose clear.

"My name is Xiang, and her name is Ariana," she explained. "I used to be an experiment in the School in China until I escaped--"

"How?" Maximum cut in.

"I don't know," Xiang said honestly. "There was a huge riot. All the youths and teenagers of China gathered outside the School and protested, yelling that experiments on children were evil and should be stopped. They smashed holes in the windows and I was able to escape."

She stopped, reliving the events of that day.

"That was the day that I was slated for termination, but...fate saved me just in time."

She looked up to see Max glancing swiftly at the dark-haired boy beside her, and once again, there was a current of words there that they alone seemed to hear and speak.

"Go on," Maximum said. "That sounds about right."

"I snuck onto a cargo ship heading for California," Xiang continued, beginning to calm down. "I met Ariana in a state park in California, and we were both looking for you, Maximum, and so we decided to team up together."

She fell silent, aware that Maximum Ride was glancing at the others of her flock, as if forming a silent council. The wild beating of her heart began to subside.

"Good job," murmured Ariana, touching the back of her hand. Her cheek was bleeding, as if scratched by some sharp twig as she'd fallen to the forest below.

Xiang nodded silently.

She felt her gaze drawn back to the leader of the flock. She could scarcely stop staring out of respectful awe.

This was _Maximum Ride_! The legendary avian hybrid that she had for so long been forced to beat the records of!

Xiang watched her in quiet, wordless admiration, observing her as she asserted her position over the others, listened to her flock, made decisions, naturally strong and responsible.

She had the look of a true leader, born and bred, in those eyes.

When she turned back, her hard brown stare pinning Ariana and Xiang down, Xiang saw a hint of the authority and strength that her own flock leader, Jinlong, had always shown to his flock.

No wonder Maximum Ride was so valuable to the scientists, so skillful and powerful.

"All right," Max said, narrowing her eyes. "But why were you looking for me?"

"The School created me, and--and others, too," Xiang told her quietly, every word dragged painfully out of her, "solely to beat your records. The School made us illegally, as you were the only avian mutants that Itex officially commissioned to be made, and they kept pressuring us to surpass your skills. I sort of understood you, since...we're all made by the School, all of us here."

The flock was silent, watching her warily, but they were listening. The dark-skinned girl moved a little closer to the leader, her large brown eyes on Xiang, as if she was seeing her as a child.

"But then I was set free," Xiang went on, forcing her voice not to shake. "I had nowhere to go, except away from the School, that's all I knew. But I just wanted to find others--others like me. And _you_--were the only ones I knew."

Her words left a quiet trailing upon the air. The flock looked at one another, and Xiang envied them, how they instinctively turned to the blond girl with the fierce stare and the tall, dark boy who hovered beside them.

They were a family, and they were together. Watching them, Xiang felt profoundly alone, and the absence of her own flock bit at her heart.

The little blond girl fluttered forward slightly to hover beside Max. Her small white wings were the color of fresh snow, and the sight of a little child tore at Xiang's heart.

"I think they're telling the truth," the little girl said solemnly. "They feel like they've been through a lot, and they're lonely. Max, they're just like us."

The two other younger children nodded, and the pale, strawberry-blond boy frowned, thoughtfully putting his hand to his chin. "I guess, if Angel says so."

Maximum turned to look at Ariana and Xiang, distanced from her flock. Her eyes were beginning to soften, and Xiang saw a mother's eyes in them.

She swallowed. _Like Yueyin._

"You've...been on the run a lot, haven't you?" Maximum inquired, her eyes taking in their ragged appearance.

Xiang nodded tightly. "Yes."

Max was silent for a few moments, her eyes flicking up and down, as she considered.

"All right," she said finally. "If you're really not from the School, there isn't any reason why you can't join us. I mean, after all, you're kin--as much a kinship a bunch of recombinant DNA life-forms can possess."

Xiang laughed slightly, whether out of stress or sheer terror she couldn't tell.

"You were made by the School too," Max went on. "I guess we've all been through the same thing, and we know that being a mutant isn't exactly a trip to the mall."

Xiang swallowed. Somewhere within her, a note of relief struck.

"I think we should all stay together," she said quietly. "That's what a flock is for--to protect one another."

Max's eyes sharpened with interest. "Flocks. Are there any more of you?"

Xiang forced herself to nod. "Yes. There--were five of us. But every last one of my flock was terminated by the School. I'm the only one left."

Max's gaze softened slightly, and she seemed to consider her in a different way. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Xiang," she said, all the fierce hardness of her voice before now replaced by gentleness.

"No, it's fine," Xiang replied dully. "They would have been tortured by the School otherwise. Wherever they are now, they're probably happier."

Maximum's flock was disturbed by this news, she could tell, that avian mutants like them had been killed mercilessly by the School. The children clung closer together, looking frightened, while the two teenage boys hovered silently by, their eyes narrowed in anger.

"And you?" Maximum addressed Ariana.

"I'm a new mutant," the wolf girl explained. "The first of my kind. I'm a Lycan, a recently developed breed of Eraser."

The muscles in Maximum's face tightened to form a scowl. "You aren't an Eraser, are you, though?" she asked warily.

"No!" Xiang shook her head vehemently. "If she were, I would never be traveling with her. She isn't evil in the least, and she isn't working for the School."

The flock murmured slightly, edging closer together. Xiang could understand their wariness; clearly they had been hunted by these Erasers all their lives, and were not inclined to trust Ariana.

"That's right," Ariana said. "I was created when some scientists who disobeyed the School wanted to see what happened if they trained a wolf mutant in a nurturing environment, instead of training it to kill avian mutants."

"That's new," Max said thoughtfully. Her eyes slid sideways to meet the steady dark gaze of the black-haired boy, and they seemed to confer silently for a moment.

"Do you trust us?" Xiang asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Max hesitated. "You know what," she said, "it's just very, very hard to trust anyone when your whole life, people have been betraying you and hurting you. How do I know this isn't some plot to fool us all right into the hands of the School? I honestly think nothing's too low for them to stoop to."

_She thinks that the School might have made us to fool them?! _Xiang thought, dumbfounded.

But then again, this was the _School _they were talking about.

"But you can trust us," she said, putting all the strength of her honest belief into her voice. "We'll never betray you for the School. Besides, you're almost like kin to us. I know how it's like to have a flock, and I know how you can't trust anyone else. But I feel like I can trust _you_."

Ariana nodded. "Like we said, mutants have to stick together."

Maximum glanced back at her flock, her brown eyes clearly conveying, _What do you think_?

The dark-haired boy shrugged a shoulder wordlessly.

The strawberry-blond boy frowned for a moment, then nodded slightly.

The dark-skinned girl nodded firmly.

The little blond boy looked uncertain for a moment, then put his hand in the dark-skinned girl's. "Okay," he said.

And finally, the pretty blue-eyed little girl nodded, her blond curls bouncing against her shoulders.

"All right, so that's the decision for now," Maximum concluded, turning back to Xiang and Ariana. "My bad-guy radar hasn't gone completely nuts yet, so that's a good sign. So...."

She trailed off, tilting her head to the side, and appeared to be listening to something unheard by the rest of them. Xiang watched her in curiosity.

"Yeah, okay then," she repeated, her eyes focusing on the pair of them once more. "I guess it should be okay to take you back to the house and get you something to eat. It's clear you two have been on the run for a while now."

"Thank you so much," Xiang said gratefully.

"Don't mention it," she said shortly, and she downstroked powerfully, soaring off into the night as wind rippled along her feathers.

One by one, the rest of the flock turned to follow Max, flying in an instinctive formation behind her, leaving Xiang and Ariana behind.

"Let's go," murmured Ariana, and they, too, beat their wings, swooping after the flock of Maximum Ride, falling into formation with them.

No words were exchanged as the eight of them flew over the treetops, leaves brushing them, wind skimming their feathers, moving side by side.

Xiang breathed in the sweet night air, perfumed by the scent of leaves. The shapes of the flock were dark, indistinct figures, flying all around her, and though she knew they were subtly guarding her, she couldn't ignore the feeling of safety it brought her.

And when she closed her eyes, listening only to the rhythmic beating of wings, she could almost imagine it was her own flock that flew beside her.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for the late update, everyone! School does that to a person. **

**From now on until sometime in the middle of December, my updates are going to be few and far between. I have this really big test that demands a lot of study time, and I want to do well on it, so I'm sacrificing fanfic-writing time. :( **

**Please review! I might just update a few more times if I feel that there are lots of people who want to read this story. :D**


	13. For Now

They alighted near the garden gates of the house, circling several times over the roof before landing, their shoes skidding over the water-softened grass.

"Well, this is it," Max said, tucking in her wings and striding confidently over to the door. The flock followed her, Xiang and Ariana catching up to them from a distance, though they hung slightly behind, uncertain about their position of favor within the flock.

Xiang had to keep reminding herself that she had finally done it, after weeks of being on the run; this truly was the Maximum Ride she had spent so much of her life thinking of!

But now that their mission was accomplished, what were they going to do?

Warily, she followed the footsteps of the flock up to the front steps.

Max rapped her knuckles once against the door.

Footsteps pounded loudly behind it, a girl's voice calling faintly, "I'll get it, Mom!", and then the door swung open with a creak.

Xiang couldn't help flinching back, after years of paranoia, though the person who had answered the door was completely harmless-looking.

A girl stood there in the doorway. She had long black hair and wide dark brown eyes set in a tan face, and for some strange reason, she reminded Xiang of someone.

"Max!" the girl exclaimed, moving forward to hug Max. She let go, confusion still lingering on her face. "Why didn't you just come in through the window like you normally do?"

"Well, Ella, we--" Max began, but the girl gasped as she took notice of Xiang and Ariana.

"Who are they?" Ella asked. Her brown eyes darted between Max and the two girls, widening as she took in the sight of their half-folded wings. "They're like you!"

"We found them in the middle of the woods," Max explained, brushing past the girl into the house and beckoning for the rest of them to follow. "Come on inside."

Xiang looked over her shoulder at Ariana, who shrugged wordlessly and quickly ascended the steps as if to say: _Well, if Max says so._

A wave of warmth rolled over Xiang as she entered the house, and a sense of well-being and comfort and safety wrapped itself around her like a blanket. It was incredible. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, feeling all the stress and fear of the past few weeks evaporating in the warmth.

"It smells great," Ariana breathed, walking into the house and stopping beside the little blond boy. "I love this house."

"Yeah, well, it won't smell so great if you keep standing next to the Gasman," the strawberry-blond boy muttered, stalking past them and flinging himself on the couch.

Xiang sent Max an inquiring look.

"No, we're not kidding," Max said, her face completely serious. "If you're wise, you're going to find someplace in this house as far away from him as you possibly can."

Ariana laughed, ruffled the little blond boy's hair, and moved away.

Xiang gazed all around her. It had been a long time since she was able to stand in a room with other humans and feel that her life wasn't in danger. This house radiated a serene aura of comfort and security, sheltering everyone inside. She was standing in a small hall with a row of hooks along the wall, where coats and hats hung in organized neatness. There was a living room off to her right, filled with various couches and armchairs, and a bathroom ahead of her, next to a flight of stairs leading to the second floor.

And to her left, through another little hall, was what she thought was a kitchen, from where the incredible, wonderful smell was emanating.

She breathed deeply in. "Is this your house, Max?" she asked softly.

Max threw her dark brown jacket over a couch and turned around. Wariness still lingered in her eyes when she looked at Xiang, almost as if she suspected her of attempting to pry information out of her.

Dismay pounded through Xiang.

"Y-you don't really think we're still spies, do you?" she blurted out impulsively. She stopped, stammering, and tried to recollect her thoughts. "I-I mean, Ariana and I are people you can trust."

"You never know," Max said, her tone guarded. "A while back, we ran into two kids in the middle of the woods where we were hiding out. A girl and a boy. They were runaways, just like you."

"Oh," went Xiang, wondering what happened afterwards.

"We found out they were spies from the School," Max continued quietly. "They had been starved and tortured to the point where they had to betray us to the School in order to save their own lives."

Xiang watched her, her heart sinking. "But--" she tried to say, but Max interrupted her.

"I mean, I could understand. It was their lives for the lives of a few people they didn't know. I totally get it."

She leaned forward, the look in her brown eyes intense as she locked gazes with her.

"I never give anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore," she said quietly. "But the flock trusts you, and so far I don't feel like I have to kill you. But let me tell you this: if you were really sent by the School, we will find out, and trust me, it won't be pretty."

She moved away, her words lingering coldly on the air.

Xiang stared at her back, filled with a new respect and awe for the fierce-eyed girl.

Truly, no one had ever reminded her more of Jinlong.

Max was the leader, the parent of her flock. If anything happened to them, she took the responsibility. They were her family and her life. She devoted herself to keeping them safe, and she would ensure that no one would ever hurt them again.

_It's been a long time since anyone did that for me._

She dropped her head, letting her gaze wander, sightlessly tracing the pattern of the wood floor under her feet.

_I understand you, too, _she thought. _I know what it's like to have people you love and need to protect in a world that hates you. But the School holds nothing over me, and I'll never betray you. You'll see._

"Hey."

She turned around, shaken by her grim promises, and saw Ariana standing behind her, gazing inquiringly down at her.

"She still doesn't trust us?" she asked quietly.

Xiang shook her head.

"She told me it happened to her before, and they betrayed her," she murmured, moving closer so that the flock wouldn't hear her. "I think it's going to take a while for them to accept that we're not enemies."

Ariana tilted her head. "Hey, cheer up! We did it!" she said quietly, smiling. "So what if it takes them a while? They'll see soon enough that we've been through it all, too."

"I hope so," Xiang murmured, looking back at the living room where the flock was in their own little group, apart from them.

"Max?"

Xiang whipped around as a woman suddenly stepped out of the sweet-smelling kitchen.

The woman stopped in front of the flock, tilting her head in confusion. Her wavy black hair was bundled into a ponytail, and she was dressed in jeans and a sweater over her shirt. She had a motherly air to her, sharply contrasting with the lady whitecoats back at the School. She wore a pair of colorful oven mitts over her hands, as if she'd been baking something, and her dark eyes moved questioningly among the flock. She bore a striking resemblance to the girl, Ella.

Xiang jumped slightly as her eyes moved to hers. _Her eyes are just like Max's. _

"Hi, Mom," Max said, giving her a hug.

_That's Max's mother?! _Xiang thought, dumbfounded. _How on earth....?_

"Why didn't you come in through the window as usual?" asked Max's mother. She glanced at Xiang and Ariana, standing self-consciously apart from the flock. "Who are they? Did you find them?"

Xiang, hearing her voice, felt stunned. Was that a _caring _tone she detected in this adult's voice?

She thought back among her experiences among the adults at the School. Their voices had been hard, careless, merciless, cruelly ignoring the fact that their experiments had feelings. She had grown up knowing only that adults were people who meant her harm.

Looking back now at this woman, and her soft, kind features, Xiang thought that maybe she could trust her.

_Maybe adults aren't _all _cruel...._

"Mom, this is Xiang, and this is Ariana," Max explained. "We found them in the woods. They've been on the run from the School too."

"Oh!" Max's mother put a hand to her mouth, her brown eyes softening in sympathy. "Are you hurt?" she asked, walking across to them.

"N-no," Xiang mumbled uncertainly, unused to adults being kind to her.

"Come on into the kitchen, everyone," the woman said, putting a gentle, guiding hand on Xiang's back. "The cookies just finished cooling and they should be ready to eat."

"Yes!" Max yelled, punching a fist into the air, and the flock stormed into the kitchen like a pack of wolves.

The woman shook her head in despair.

"If only I could make a batch of cookies that had a life span longer than an hour...." she muttered, then turned to Xiang. "So, what was your name again, honey?"

Xiang hooked her left foot behind her right, stunned by the kind, motherly expression in Max's mother's deep brown eyes. "Um. Xiang," she murmured.

"That's a pretty name. Very Asian," said the woman, and looked inquiringly at Ariana. "And you?"

"Ariana." The wolf girl grinned.

"And you've both got...?"

By way of answer, Xiang pulled her teal-gray-blue wing slightly away from her back.

The woman's eyes widened.

"Oh, my goodness! I never knew there were more of you," she exclaimed. She put her hands on their shoulders and peered anxiously past them into the hall. "Are you being followed?"

Xiang tilted her head. "Um...sort of," she said. "It's been a week since any of them showed up, though."

"So that's good," Ariana added.

The woman stood back and gazed at them compassionately. "I'm so sorry," she said quietly. She stepped aside and gestured to the warm, heavenly-smelling kitchen. "My name's Dr. Martinez. Please go on in and help yourself to the cookies. Don't worry; we'll help you out."

For some reason, as Xiang looked up into the woman's friendly, gently smiling face, she knew that she could trust her.

"Th-thank you," Xiang stammered awkwardly, and with Ariana hopping with impatience at her heels, she went into the kitchen.

The flock and Max were gathered around a large table, wolfing down cookies noisily. Xiang stopped for a moment, hesitant to join them.

Ariana touched her side. "Ever had cookies?" she whispered.

"No," Xiang replied softly. "What are _cookies_?"

Ariana beamed back at her. "Man, oh, man, you're in for a treat then! C'mon, let's go get some! The good whitecoats made some for me back at the School, and they are the best."

She propelled Xiang forward to the table, and several of the flock members parted to let them through. "Incoming, hungry mutants; incoming, hungry mutants," Ariana muttered as she brushed them aside to let herself through.

"You'll have to fight Max for them first," the strawberry-blond boy said, grinning.

"Hey, c'mon! Xiang hasn't ever eaten cookies before!" Ariana protested.

Gasps of horror were heard all around the table, and Max sighed and shoved the plate reluctantly over to Xiang.

"Go ahead," she said.

Xiang looked down at the plate. There were circles of some brown doughy-looking stuff, dotted with dark brown, and the most fragrant, beautiful smell was wafting up from them.

"They're not poisoned, you know," Max told her.

"There aren't any bombs in them," the little boy added.

Hesitantly, Xiang picked up a cookie and put it to her mouth.

It seemed if some rock had struck her a stunning blow the instant that she bit into the warm, soft cookie, and stars were reeling amongst her vision. Her mouth was overwhelmed by a wonderfully rich, sweet taste, and she felt chips of some sweet stuff melting on her tongue. She was certain there wasn't a more heavenly-tasting food on this earth.

She chewed slowly and swallowed, her eyes wide, knowing that she must be staring dumbly into space.

"Uh-oh, she looks like she's gonna faint," she heard the little blond boy saying distantly through the haze of cookie-induced bliss.

"So?" Ariana nudged her, grinning.

"Incredible," Xiang heard herself say in a whisper. She looked down at the cookie in her hand and took another ravenous bite.

"God, what did they feed you back at the School?" Max asked, looking disturbed.

Xiang swallowed her mouthful of cookie before answering. "Um, strange pills and awful pellet-like food, mostly. I've never had normal food before."

"Ohmygosh, that's awful!" squealed the dark-skinned girl in consternation. "That is, like, totally awful! I can't even imagine going through my whole lifetime without eating stuff like chocolate and candy and ice cream and all that good stuff, and Max's mom's cookies are the best! There was this like, one time, when Max's mom made some cookies but Max got to them before we did, and then she like, ate them all up in fifteen minutes and there were like sixty of the cookies, and we were sort of mad but not really, 'cuz _everyone _knows that Max has some weird obsession with cookies, 'cuz she can't keep her hands off them and she goes into this weird berserker rage if we try to keep the cookies from her, so it's a great idea not to take the cookies from her, otherwise you're gonna be in really, really, really, really, really, _really _bad trouble, and--mmf!"

The dark-haired boy quickly covered her mouth, and the flow of words was abruptly cut.

Xiang and Ariana couldn't help themselves. They stared at the girl as though she had an extra head.

"Yep, that's the Nudge Channel. All Nudge, all the time," Max sighed, reaching for another cookie. Her mouth twitched in amusement.

"Um..." Xiang didn't know if she should ask, but... "Did you just say that--all in _one breath_?"

"Uh-huh!"

The dark-skinned girl--Nudge--nodded proudly.

Xiang stared at her in shock.

"Well...um. That's...really fast," she stammered.

"Get used to it," the little blond boy told her wisely.

"I can't help it, I love to talk," Nudge chattered. "I mean, there was this one time when we were at the store, 'cuz Max's mom took us there, and then--"

"Nudge," growled the strawberry-blond boy, "I appreciate actually being able to _hear _myself think."

The little girl giggled. "I remember that time! Remember we got asked out of the store because the clerk went over to Nudge and asked her to please stop talking because it was disturbing the other customers, and Nudge said 'Bite me'? And so they made us leave?"

"'Bite me'...hahaha! That's my girl!" Max grinned at Nudge, who beamed back happily.

"Y'know, maybe we should get to know them or something!" Nudge suggested. "I mean, we don't even know each other's names but we're talking like we're friends, which is sort of awkward 'cuz it's like talking to strangers, which is very very awkward for me, it practically screams, '_Awk-ward_!', but that's just me, and--"

"_Okay_!" the strawberry-blond boy interrupted loudly. "_My_ name is _Iggy_!"

"Nice to meet you," Xiang said politely. Ariana nodded to him.

"I'm Angel," said the little girl, looking up at them. She smiled sweetly.

Xiang gazed down at her and smiled back. Her name suited her. She was so small and pretty, just like an angel. Her name would be _An Shi_, in Chinese.

"Fang," the other boy said brusquely, not bothering to glance over his shoulder.

"I'm Nudge!" the dark-skinned girl said happily.

"I'm the Gasman! But you can call me Gazzy!" the little blond boy told them.

"And why...?" Ariana asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No! Don't ask," Iggy ordered. "Please. Just...don't."

"And me--the indestructible Max," Max said, leaning back against the table and nodding.

"It's nice to meet all of you," Xiang said, attempting to smile back at Max's coolly half-scowling expression, which she had already figured out to be her usual expression.

"I _love _your wings!" squealed Nudge, bouncing up to her. She touched Xiang's shoulder blade gently. "Oh--my--gosh, they're, like, gray, and like, sort of dark green-blue, with, like, _blue _in them! You've got wings with blue feathers! That is _so _awesome!"

"If only the whitecoats had been just as creative with our color schemes," Max said sarcastically, pulling one of her wings slightly open. They shimmered tan-brown-black-white in the lamplight. "We got a wonderful variety of brown, black, and white."

"Your wings are beautiful, though." Xiang touched Nudge's wing, which she, too, had stretched open a bit. It was a beautiful shade of tan-fawn.

"What do your wings look like?" Nudge asked Ariana.

"Eh, black." Ariana slid one of her wings partway through the slit in the back of her jacket, revealing the dark feathers that Xiang thought were as black as the night.

"Ooh!" Nudge's eyes widened. "They're like, totally black! Just like Fang's! Fang's got black wings, too!"

"Well, they're not all black," Ariana mused. "We found a few dark gray feathers underneath a few days ago. But yeah, pretty much."

"So, let me get this straight." Max lifted herself off the table and walked over to Ariana. "You're...a wolf-human hybrid, _not _an Eraser, with _wings_."

"How come they're not big and clumsy like Eraser wings?" Gazzy asked. "Y'know, like, grafted on?"

Xiang and Ariana glanced sideways at each other quickly. Xiang wasn't quite sure they could reveal that Ariana's wings hadn't been grafted on, they'd been formed, or that Xiang had a strange skill of _stealing motion_.

Fortunately, both of them were saved from answering by the entrance of Dr. Martinez and Ella into the kitchen.

"Sorry I had to rush off like that," Dr. Martinez apologized, coming over to the table with folded clothes in her arms. "Here, you two, some clean clothes for you. You both look like you've been through quite an ordeal."

"Yeah, thanks," Xiang murmured, cautiously accepting the pile of clothes Dr. Martinez handed her. The shirt and jeans actually felt warm and comfortable, a feeling her own clothes had lost a long time ago.

"You can take a hot shower and change into those later," Dr. Martinez said, opening the refrigerator. "For now, let's fix you some food. You must be starving."

"Ohh, you bet," Ariana groaned, holding a hand over her stomach.

"Yeah, I totally get that!" Nudge squealed, hopping up next to Xiang and Ariana. "I'm always hungry, too! In fact, Max says--"

"_Hmm_," Dr. Martinez interrupted quite loudly. She took out a dish covered in plastic wrapping. "Well, we have enough of taco filling, and if we just put it in the taco shells, I think that'll be pretty good. How does that sound, girls?"

"Yeah, thanks!" Ariana said happily.

"All right then." Dr. Martinez smiled at them before turning to the stove.

The flock settled back around the table, their glances now trained on Ariana and Xiang.

"Um..." Xiang hesitantly sat down at the table, not knowing if the flock would find it offending. Ariana did likewise, boldly meeting the stares of the flock.

The pretty dark-haired girl--Ella--leaned across the table on her elbows. "You're just like Max, then?" she inquired.

"Yes," Xiang replied. "Different School, but we've all got avian DNA."

"Wow!" Ella whispered. "You're so lucky that we found you, too!"

"Yes," Xiang agreed, scraping the toe of her shoe back and forth across the floor. "Um, and we're really grateful," she added awkwardly.

_Xiang! Why must you speak so awkwardly and uncertainly? _she yelled at herself in her mind.

She really did appreciate all that this girl and her mother and Max had done, bringing her and Ariana into their home, but she wished that she was better able to express it!

Fortunately, Ella gave her an understanding smile and moved away from the table to help her mother.

"So, you say you're from the School in China," Max said when her sister had left.

Xiang nodded. "I am, at least," she explained. "But Ariana's from the same School that you were made from."

"How old are you again?" Max inquired, cutting her sharp gaze between the two of them.

"Thirteen," Xiang answered.

"Ooh! You're, like, almost as old as Max, and I'm like, almost as old as you!" squealed Nudge.

Xiang saw Max's eyes narrow slightly at the comment. "And you, Ariana?" Max asked.

"Me? I'm sixteen." Ariana reached for another cookie.

There was a brief silence at the table.

"Well, you're a lot older than the rest of us," Iggy commented at last.

"What?" Ariana exclaimed. "Stop making me sound like I'm sixty years old or something!"

Xiang couldn't help but giggle, though she noticed Max's eyes narrow once more.

"No, it's just that we expected you to be three years old, at the most," Gazzy explained seriously.

Both Xiang and Ariana nearly spit out their mouthfuls of cookie.

"_Three_?" Ariana repeated in a shriek.

"Why _three_?" Xiang asked, just as incredulous.

"Well, Erasers that the School made--our School, at least--usually don't last more than six years," Max explained, tracing a finger absentmindedly against the surface of the table. "They have really short life spans, and their expiration dates come really soon."

"Expiration dates?" Xiang repeated softly, feeling a cold rock settle at the pit of her stomach.

"When you die," Gazzy hastily defined.

"But..." Xiang looked from one person to another. "Don't we die around seventy years later, like normal people?"

"No, because we're not _real _people," Max said scornfully. "Apparently, the whitecoats have everything carefully orchestrated, even our death dates."

Xiang swallowed."Oh."

It was an even more frightening thing than anything else she'd ever experienced in her life to know that someone had planned out her life, and had her death marked out in their palm.

"Well, I'm a different Eraser--Lycan, I keep telling you--so I probably will die whenever you guys die," Ariana reasoned. "Besides, yours can't be anytime soon--you look your ages."

Xiang breathed a quiet sigh of relief. So, it wasn't as if she was suddenly going to drop dead any moment. There had to be some plan for this.

"Dinner's ready," Dr. Martinez called from the stove, and she took the taco filling off the plate and began to fill plates of taco shells with them.

"Oh, that smells really good," Xiang breathed, inhaling the unfamiliar but fragrant smell of Mexican food.

"Thank you!" Dr. Martinez smiled and brought the plates over, sliding one in front of her. "Eat up."

"Really, really good," Ariana mumbled through a mouthful of food, already tearing ravenous bites out of one of her tacos.

"Yeah, Mom's a really good cook," Ella said, coming over to the table as well.

"Better than Max, at least," Iggy coughed behind his hand.

Max whipped her head around and glared at him. "What was that, Iggy?!"

"She's glaring at you," Gazzy informed Iggy.

Iggy plastered an innocent expression on his face. "Nothing, of course, Max."

The dark-haired boy standing next to him--Fang--cracked a slight smile. Xiang jumped when he moved; he hadn't spoken a single word throughout the entire conversation, and she'd forgotten he was even there.

"Whatever," Max muttered, turning back. "But I'm going to get you later, Iggy. Anyways, Angel?"

"Yes, Max?" The golden-curled little girl turned to the flock leader with an angelic smile.

"Run a scan on these two, please, sweetie," Max instructed her, stroking her hair. "Can you find out if they're telling the truth?"

"Okay, Max, I'll try," she replied.

"Scan? Like, a radar or something?" Ariana asked, swallowing a mouthful of taco.

"Just keep your minds open and don't try to hide any of your thoughts," Max said sharply. "Angel will be able to tell if you're lying or not, or have bad intentions, so if you thought you could get away with fooling us, think again."

"We have nothing to hide," Xiang said honestly.

"Let's hope so." Max crossed her arms.

Xiang sat back and closed her eyes, relaxing in her seat and trying to "open" her mind up. She breathed deeply several times, smoothing out her mind and making it clear and plain.

When she opened her eyes, she found the little girl staring intensely at her from across the table. Her gaze was balanced and sharply focused.

Xiang felt the world tilting slightly. All she could see was the little girl's stare, bright blue, searing and burning her vision until the imprint of her eyes was left like a scorch mark.

Suddenly, she gasped.

She could feel the girl tunneling through her thoughts, searching and lifting aside memories, reading the information hidden in her mind.

Her eyes widened as the little girl dug deeper through her mind, searching for a center.

_No. My flock! _

She shut her eyes in pain as Angel methodically examined her memories of her flock.

For a moment, Xiang felt fear. Fear that this child, despite being so young, could wield such immense strength and power.

And then she felt Angel leaving her mind, and the imprint of her stunning blue gaze slowly faded from her vision.

She stared around her, disoriented, and saw the flock gazing back at her. It took a few moments for the world to slide back into focus.

"Huh?" she muttered. "What happened?"

"Angel?" Max asked. "What did you find, honey?"

The little girl sat back in her seat, looking serious.

"They were telling the truth, Max," she announced. "Everything they said so far is true. They aren't working for the School or the Institute, and they just want to be our friends."

Xiang felt a mixture of feelings drench her: relief that they had been proven innocent, and fear and wariness at the girl's ability to discover this information.

"All right, thanks, sweetie," Max said, patting Angel's shoulder, and then turned back to Xiang and Ariana. "Well, it looks like you two can be trusted after all, I guess."

"Thank you!" Xiang choked out. "I thought you were convinced we couldn't be."

"Yeah, you sort of were all like, 'I can only trust the flock,'" agreed Ariana, licking the last of the taco filling from her fingertips.

Max shrugged. "Whatever. You can never be too careful."

"OMG YAY!" Nudge squealed suddenly. She jumped up from the table and ran over to their side. "I just LOVE having new people come! Yay yay yay! Let's be friends!"

"Sure, why not?!" Ariana agreed in a bubbly voice, raising her tone to match that of Nudge's.

"Hey!" Gazzy crossed his arms. "I'm the only one around here allowed to make mimicking jokes!"

Xiang grinned and looked around the table, relieved that the flock had accepted them and were opening up to them. Already they seemed more friendly.

_Perhaps it's just because they didn't know what to make of us, _she thought. _They didn't know for sure whether we were friends or enemies._

Her gaze drifted down the table until it met Angel's wide, sky-blue eyes.

Xiang jerked involuntarily. Angel was staring fixedly at her with a concentration so intense it was nearly chilling.

_Is she trying to probe my mind again_? Xiang wondered, with a stirring of unease.

"Um, Angel?" Xiang whispered, leaning across the table. "How do you know how to read minds?"

Angel shrugged. "It's a skill I have," she whispered back. "I can read minds, and I can breathe underwater, and I can talk to fish."

"Wow. All that?" Xiang asked, impressed.

"And I can make people do what I want," Angel added. She tapped the side of her head and smiled knowingly. "With my mind."

Xiang felt a shiver crawl down her spine. Who would have known this angelic, beautiful child possessed such frightening powers?

"No, I'm not frightening," Angel said, smiling sweetly. "A lot of people think that we're strange. 'Cuz we're all so different."

Xiang nodded warily, aware that the girl had just answered her thoughts out loud. She really _was _a mind reader.

She glanced around the table at the rest of the flock. Did they, too, possess skills such as the ones Angel, Ariana, and she herself had?

"So what do we do now?" Iggy asked, feeling his way toward the refrigerator to get a juice. "Now that we're all buddies and everything?"

Max turned back to the two. "First and foremost," she said in that authoritative voice that Xiang so envied, "we need to know if you are being tracked by the School."

Xiang hesitated. "I don't know," she said honestly. "They haven't shown up in a week, though; we know that much. The first day I arrived in America, I was attacked by a man from the School, but I stole his ID card and escaped. Later on, when I found Ariana, we were both attacked by an enormous gang of men from the School, and then later on by two people in a restaurant who'd been employed by the School to find mutants."

Ariana nodded. "The radar contacts. They were wearing them. Apparently everyone who's employed by the School has those, so they can discover mutants without being discovered. We run hotter on the radar than normal humans."

"Ever since that incident, we haven't been found," Xiang finished.

Max nodded slowly, her mind working furiously. "One week. That could mean several things. Either those sickos lost your trail and haven't found you guys, or they already knew where you were going and were deliberately staying back to let you guys lead them to wherever you were going to."

Xiang gasped. "But that could mean...!"

Ella turned to her mother. "Mom! Will they find us?" she cried.

Dr. Martinez's brow was furrowed in worry. "Max, what do you think?" she asked, struggling to keep calm.

"We'll have to wait and see," Max said grimly. "The School always has a nasty habit of turning up when you least expect it."

"Does this mean we've put you all in danger?" Xiang asked in a whisper.

"Max, we can't throw them out!" Nudge interjected, leaning forward. Her sweet brown eyes were wide in anxiety. "They don't have anywhere to go, just like us!"

"No," Max agreed, looking at them. "We can't throw them out."

"So what exactly do we plan to do?" inquired Iggy, sucking down his juice.

Max sighed. "For now, just lay low for the next couple of days and be careful, just in case they're watching the house. No flying unless the coast is relatively clear."

Max looked back at Ariana and Xiang, cutting her fierce brown gaze between the two of them.

_You've proved that you can be trusted for now, _her eyes were saying, silently. _But if you plan to betray us in future, or give up to the School, know that you're in trouble._

"And for now," Max said, holding out her hand to them, "welcome to the flock."

* * *

**A/N: Waah! I finally finished this chapter! *rubs eyes***

**I would have had it done earlier, since I was finishing this during technology club, but the computer did something weird and erased what I'd just written.**

**So, this is the first of one of my very rare chapters during this time, and probably my only until the middle of December. From then on, I'll try to maintain weekly updates.**

**So everyone's on name terms now, and Xiang and Ariana have been accepted into the flock--for now. Wonder how that's going to end up?**

**Please keep those reviews coming, everyone. Please.  
**


	14. Spying

One foot in front of another. The other foot in front of the first.

Xiang stepped slowly down the hallway, moving her feet as softly as she could across the wood. She kept her eyes on the floor, in case she happened to trod upon a loose floorboard or something of the sort.

She felt ashamed for doing this, and for a moment, she considered turning back.

But then the whisper of voices drifted down to her from the room, and she stepped forward again, her legs as tense as if they were tightly wound ropes of twine.

She was supposed to be in bed, she reminded herself. After she and Ariana had finished eating in the kitchen, Dr. Martinez had shown them to the bathroom and allowed them to bathe, and she'd given them clothes and warm towels. Afterwards, Ella had taken them to a guest room upstairs, where the couch had been set up as a bed, and a low cot had been rolled in.

Ariana, after having her turn showering, had crashed immediately on the couch, exhausted. Xiang had left her sleeping deeply on the couch, her long limbs spread out over the pillows.

Xiang closed her eyes, summoning up the delicious feeling of the sleepy warmth of the water in the bathroom, and the soft blankets on the cot waiting for her back in their bedroom. Her mind whined in protest as she moved forward stealthily yet again, but her curiosity was stronger than her exhaustion.

Another stab of guilt pierced her. Max and her family had fed her and Ariana and given her a place to rest under their own roof, and this was how she repaid them.

By spying.

Xiang tried to reword the phrase in her mind. She wasn't spying; she was...

...listening in on a conversation the flock obviously considered private.

She was spying.

Xiang released a quiet sigh. She didn't want to appear ungrateful to her hosts, but how could anyone resist eavesdropping on a conversation when they heard their own name in it?

The flock had stayed up after Ella had shown Ariana and Xiang their bedroom. Though Ariana had been able to fall asleep at once, Xiang, for some odd reason, stayed awake.

Thoughts and memories were surging through her mind, pounding at her head: the fight on the rooftop of the restaurant, the meeting with Ariana, the man she had stolen the card pass from, the faces of her flock, the faces of the Chinese geneticists...

A dark, silent room offered too much space for thought.

Xiang had curled up on her cot and tried to sleep, but it was impossible when her own mind hummed so loudly, forcing her to keep awake. After having her sleep consist only of brief snatches of rest in between flights during their journey, instinctive paranoia snapped her awake every time she dozed off.

As she lay there stiffly, frustrated with her inability to sleep, she heard the barest whisper of voices through the open door.

The hallway had been dark, but Xiang had been able to sense movement.

_The flock._

It had been an odd sensation. She hadn't _heard _them exactly, but rather, she'd felt them moving outside the room, in the hallway.

Xiang lay there on her cot, her face pressed into her pillow, her eyes wide against the cloth, motionless, feeling only the movements out in the darkened hallway. The flock members moved through, filing into a room across from Xiang's and Ariana's room, but a distance further up, with Ella's room and the bathroom in between them.

Xiang had felt the door closing, and the members of the flock moving around inside.

Seized by a sudden powerful curiosity, aided by her insomnia, she had slid quietly from the cot and crept to the door. Closing her eyes, she focused her attention on the room where the flock was.

"Asleep...I'm sure they're asleep...."

"...sure...?"

"....definitely are....motionless...."

Xiang strained her ears, but she could only pick up broken phrases, though her senses registered the movements of the flock shuffling around inside the room.

"....talk about...."

"....safe....two....School...."

"....Xiang...."

Xiang's eyes shot wide open.

That had been the deciding factor.

And that was the reason she was standing in the middle of the hallway, feeling stupid and tired, rubbing her hands together and wondering if she should approach the door any further.

_I have to know what they're saying._

She decisively slid her feet across the floor, forward, and flattened herself against the wall, inching towards the door.

Slowly, carefully, by measured degrees, Xiang placed her ear by the door.

"Are you sure they're not spies?" came the assertive voice of Maximum Ride.

Even though Xiang couldn't see her, she could picture the tall, confident girl, acting as leader, and felt a stab of envy.

"Who knows?" That was the pale boy...Iggy, his name was. He sounded distinctly weary. "It could be another trick of the School, maybe not. Maybe it was stupid, to have them sleeping under our roof when we don't know anything about them at all."

Xiang's blood ran cold, and she tightened her hands.

They thought they were spies for the School.

Xiang's muscles tensed. She was crouching right outside their door, and she was very aware of her position and how she must appear.

If they found her listening in on their conversation, all their suspicions and doubts about her being a spy would certainly be confirmed.

Xiang swallowed and leaned closer.

She would have to be careful. Very, very careful.

"Why did we even agree to that?" asked a quiet, calculated voice. It was the dark-haired boy, Fang. "This is dangerous."

"Everything's dangerous," Maximum snapped back.

After she finished speaking, there was a tense, long moment of silence, broken only by the timid voice of the little boy, Gazzy: "Max, are you okay?"

"Hold on," Max muttered, her voice so low Xiang could barely hear it. "Voice dispensing valuable information."

_Voice? What Voice? What is she talking about?_

"Well, it's better to have our enemies where we can see them, if they're our enemies at all," Max said at last, sounding as if she had just snapped awake from a long sleep. "We can observe them, and keep watch over their behavior. We know what to do if they start acting funny."

"But couldn't that also be true of _them_?" Fang countered. "They can probably keep watch on _us_."

"And report back to the School, with all the information about our whereabouts," Iggy said tightly.

More silence, weighted with tension this time.

Then Nudge spoke, quietly.

"I don't know," she said. "They seemed nice to me. And they were like us. They had wings, and they've been on the run for a long time." She hesitated. "But I'm not really sure."

"Nudge, sweetie," Max said, her voice soft, "no one's sure. This...isn't something we can make a decision about in a few hours."

"But we _did_," Fang interrupted. His voice, too, was underscored with a current of tension. "And we may just be harboring the enemy beneath our roof."

"I'm not stupid," Max hissed. "I wouldn't make a decision if it meant jeopardizing Mom and Ella. This is their house we're living in; they're taking just as much of a risk as we are. If I honestly thought these two were pawns of the School, I'd have kicked their butts--majorly--and scattered their remnants for the crows."

Her voice was edged with a hating steel; she wasn't joking. Xiang swallowed, but remained motionless.

"Can we trust them?" Iggy asked.

"I think they're okay," Nudge said, quietly. "But if they really are, it would mean that we've been found--again." There was a sniffling sound, and someone moved inside the room.

"Nudge, it's okay," Max whispered. "We can deal with this. We've always dealt with this."

"But I don't want _any_ more stupid Erasers after us," Gazzy said. His young voice held the bite of dislike, just like the others. His tone rose as he continued. "They always mess everything up! I don't want them to ruin our lives any more than they already have!"

"Ssh, Gazzy," Max said. "Remember, Mom and Ella and those two are sleeping."

"Do _you _trust them, Max?" Fang asked quietly.

The room stilled as the flock waited for their leader's answer.

"I don't know," Max replied slowly. Quiet footsteps sounded from within the room, and Xiang guessed she'd begun pacing. "They seem innocent enough. But we don't really know much about them; everything they've told us could be a story. Or not. But when we first met them, they thought _we _were from the School. Their accusations and their reactions were pretty genuine."

"Anything could be an act," Iggy reminded her.

"Yeah, I know. Remember those two kids we met back in the woods? Those two?"

"I don't understand how I didn't hear them. They were so quiet..." Iggy's voice was self-reproachful.

"Don't worry about it, Ig." The footsteps paced to the door, and then away. "The point is, we took them in when we didn't know anything about them, except they were hungry, starving, and pitiful. And they ended up being spies. They had a transmitter. The School forced them to track us."

"We should have interrogated them, before we let them do _anything_."

Fang's voice was laced with tension, bordering on fury, and Xiang heard the pound of a fist connecting solidly with wood.

"What's damaging the dresser going to do, Fang?" Max snapped. "It's not going to help our situation, which is out of hand right now, is it?"

"Then do something about it," Fang said, his voice quiet but still threatening.

"What do you think I'm doing? This whole situation is a mess and you two aren't helping me work it out at all!"

"So you admit, you made a bad decision in letting them enter?" Iggy demanded.

"I never said that!" Max hissed. "But I told you, we can't throw them out! Angel ran a scan on them, didn't she? They were telling the truth!"

"Well, if the School knows about Angel's skills, do you really think they would have overlooked this when equipping these two to spy on us?" Fang shot back. "They would have _known _that Angel would run a scan on them! They would have _known _they needed to look like they were telling the truth! What if they developed some new technology? Some new way to hide something? Chipped something in their brains?"

An icy silence hung heavy and thick in the room after those last words.

Xiang pressed against the wall, scarcely breathing, her heart hammering.

"Huh," Max murmured.

"Having doubts _now_, are you?" Iggy burst out. "After we admitted them to the house! After we let them stay under your mom's roof! After you _freaking welcomed them to the flock_!"

There was a sharp swishing sound, and Xiang guessed that Max had whipped around to face him.

"I know what's going on!" she snarled. "I know that having them here is a risk, but since when was anything _not _a risk, Iggy? Don't you think I have my reasons for acting? This has _never_ happened before! But I know how to deal with it, just like I've dealt with every other freaking situation we've encountered!"

Once again, a tense wordlessness gripped the room.

Then Nudge spoke up, so softly and timidly Xiang could barely hear her.

"Max has always kept us out of trouble," she murmured. "Max...knows what to do. I trust her, whatever she's going to act on. And I think that those two are innocent...right?"

Her last word was uncertain, but Xiang felt her movements inside the room. The pressure was lifted from Nudge's seat as she stood up, and she slipped her hand in Max's.

Xiang's mind hummed and buzzed. How could she sense the movements of the flock when she herself could not see them?

Her mind drifted into a faintly wondering haze for a moment, and then returned abruptly when the sharp voice of Max broke through her consciousness.

"Think about it. When we first met them, they were convinced _we _were from the School. They didn't know who we were, they didn't know we were mutants. They thought we were _humans_."

"At least, they _acted _like they did," Iggy said bitterly.

"And furthermore, they didn't _act _like bad guys. They didn't act ashamed, like they were frightened, not like those kids we met. You could tell with those two, they were definitely ashamed."

"Those two were humans," Fang said. "These two are mutants. If they were made by the School, they may not _have _the feelings to feel ashamed programmed into them."

"Like Omega," Nudge murmured, barely audible.

Xiang felt her heart fluttering within her chest. How were there so many arguments against them?

She'd thought they'd been accepted into the flock.

How utterly stupid of her! Obviously, it wasn't as easy as that! The flock would never trust her so quickly.

Then the small, sweet voice of Angel, the only person who had not taken part in the conversation up until now, filled the silence in the room.

"I think they're telling the truth."

A rustle of clothing. Xiang felt Max bend down beside Angel and lift up a hand to stroke her hair.

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Max asked.

"How do you know?" Gazzy asked. "For all we know...they could be our enemies."

"Tell us everything you know, lamby," Max coaxed. "What did you see when you looked into their minds?"

Xiang held her breath, fearful of being discovered, especially at such a crucial moment.

Inside the room, the members of the flock were leaning towards Angel, curious.

"Ariana's mind was a little hard to read," Angel said slowly. "She had too many thoughts bouncing around in her mind. It was like she had three different people in her head. But their histories were the same."

"Three different people?" Gazzy echoed, frowning.

"Let her finish," Max told him.

"Ariana was made at the School we were from, but in an underground section where they wanted to test Erasers to see if they could be made good, like she said," Angel went on. "I saw whitecoats, but they were all smiling at her--not like the whitecoats we know. And there's memories in her head, of whitecoats rocking her, and watching her run in a field, and making her cookies."

"Good whitecoats?" Iggy tested the phrase.

"Ariana thought nothing but good things about these whitecoats," Angel said. "And there's another whitecoat. One who was really important. He was like a father figure to her. But his face is blurred. I can't see who it is. She doesn't even know very well."

"A father figure," Nudge said. "Like..." Her voice trailed off.

"Her training wasn't like the Erasers'," Angel said slowly. "They didn't make her train hard for ages in the courtyard. They let her run free, but they took records of how fast and how strong she was. And they taught her how to hunt properly, like a wolf, not like an Eraser. Ariana's here because she was told that we needed her help."

"Who told her, sweetheart?" Max's voice was soft.

"The good whitecoats."

"So we can be sure her intentions are good," Max said. "Ariana's a good Eraser, right?"

Xiang felt the movement of Angel's nod through the door.

"I read her emotions when we were all sitting at the table. She wasn't nervous or ashamed or calculating anything or planning. She was relaxed, and confident, and she was thinking about how she could help us."

"Her intentions may be good, but the whitecoats who made her may be misleading her," Fang pointed out. "She's under the assumption that we need her help. However, the whitecoats may have a different purpose for her."

"That's what I keep coming back to," Iggy broke in. "'Good whitecoats.' I mean, honestly. Since when have whitecoats been good? All they want is to study and make money off us. Even...even _Jeb_," he spat the word out with difficulty, "just wanted to study us, in the end."

"Oh, definitely," Max agreed. Her voice was toned with steel. "But think about it. Ariana's received different training. They gave her breed a different name. They wanted to test her out and make her good. Whatever happens now, I think Ariana won't betray people consciously because of her training."

"And she really likes Xiang," Angel added. "She doesn't want people to hurt her."

Xiang, against the wall, closed her eyes for a moment in gratitude.

_Thank you, Ariana. I could never have gotten this far without you. You're like a sister to me._

"What about the three people in her mind, huh?" Iggy reminded them. "Isn't that a little weird?"

"It could be just a defect of the experimentation," Nudge volunteered. "I mean...the whitecoats aren't always perfectly careful when they experiment..."

"Yeah." Iggy's voice was indescribably bitter. "And sometimes it costs."

"Iggy, I'm so sorry!" Nudge's voice was so filled with anguish that Xiang's heart cracked a little. "I didn't mean...I mean, I didn't mean...."

"It's okay, Nudge. I know."

"How about Xiang?" Max demanded. "Was she telling the truth, too?"

"Her mind was really easy to read. She doesn't try to hide anything," Angel said nonchalantly. "Except for the memories of her flock. She doesn't want to think about them."

"Huh...a Chinese flock." Max's voice was thoughtful.

"I knew those Chinese whitecoats were messed up," Gazzy said. "They made a flock and they wanted _us, _too."

"Xiang's whitecoats were trying to make them beat our records, like she said," Angel said. "And her flock all died because they tried to make a deal with them, to let them live in exchange for continuing their experiments, but they refused. So they killed them. And only Xiang was left. There are lots of memories in her head about hiding in a cell, and being really scared, and crying a lot. And when the day came for her to die, there were lots of teenagers. They mobbed the lab and they broke the glass walls, and they ransacked the place. Then Xiang escaped."

"Could have been caused by your blog, Fang." Xiang could picture Max, slanting a gaze at Fang.

"The blog worked," Fang shot back. "These kids wanted to save the earth. I guess it was no different in China."

Xiang gave a small jolt of surprise, but then she controlled herself and listened, motionless.

"She's really no different from us, Max," Nudge mumbled. "Her flock's dead. Imagine if that happened to us."

A collective shudder swept over the room. Xiang could feel the motion, and felt herself shiver, too, along with a stab of sorrow for her deceased flock.

"Her flock's really nice," Angel went on. "There was a really pretty one who was the mother, and the leader, a really strong teenager. Then a little one--a baby--and a younger boy. She doesn't really think about them. She tries putting it in the back of her head and she tries forgetting. But she's still really easy to read."

"Anything else, honey?" Max asked.

Angel fidgeted, and Xiang heard the rustling.

"She's jealous of you, Max," Angel said at last.

"What?" Max reared back; shock was evident in her voice.

Xiang stiffened. It was a frightening thing, to have the deepest memories and her thoughts of her mind nonchalantly flipped through and laid aside as if she were a book!

Then another thought struck her, one that made fear pound through her body:

_If Angel can read minds, she must know I'm out here._

Xiang stood there, gripping the edge of the wall, swaying back and forth uncertainly, wondering whether to turn back now or remain there.

_I'm innocent. If I'm here, it doesn't matter because Angel must know I'm telling the truth._

"What do you mean, jealous?" Max asked carefully.

"She wants to be as strong as you. She's not confident. And sometimes she thinks about the two leaders of her flock, and that makes her sad because she tells herself she'll never be as strong and powerful as them. She's jealous that you're a leader, and you're so confident. Xiang wants to be like you."

Angel paused, then added, "Actually, she's jealous of all of us. Because we have each other."

"Oh," Max said. Then she asked, more carefully, "Is she...angry?"

"No. Just sad. Really, really sad. And a little jealous. And she admires us."

"Hm..." Max dragged out the thoughtful sound. "I guess...there's nothing to fear from her, right? Why is she even here, though?"

"She remembered us after her flock died," Angel said quietly. "And then, she wanted to find us, partly because she didn't want to same thing to happen to us, partly because she needed something to do, and partly because she didn't want to be alone forever."

The thought sank into the room. Every member of the flock was still and silent, considering.

"So..." Max broke the silence. "She's just lonely, and she wanted to find us. And Ariana thinks we need her help."

"Yes." Angel nodded, and vibrations raced through the floor as she bounced up and down on her toes. "I think they're harmless, Max. They seem to want to help us."

"What do you think, guys?" Max addressed the rest of the flock.

"I think they're okay," Gazzy said, a tad uncertainly.

"They don't have a flock," Nudge said. "And Xiang needs people. She wants her flock. I...I can understand that."

"Ugh, fine." Iggy's voice was irritated. "If you guys want to go ahead and sympathize. But I'm not trusting them until they prove they _can _be trusted. Completely."

"I agree," Fang said, his voice low. "It seems way too odd that these two would have found us and _not _be pawns of the School. But I'll go with your judgment, Max."

Max nodded, and drew in a deep breath.

"I think we should trust them. For now," she added. "They've got no place to go, and from what Angel tells us, they genuinely want to help us. We'll accept them...to a point."

Max paused slightly, before continuing.

"But don't get me wrong. First sign of trouble, or suspicion, I'm kickin' them out on their butts. And trust me, they won't have a chance to report back to the School when I'm done with them."

Xiang felt her sharp words piercing through the door, as if she was actually speaking directly to her, and shivered, pulling back.

"Okay?" Max asked, the word slightly forceful as she directed it at her flock.

From around the room, a chorus of murmured "yes"s sounded.

"Okay then." Max's voice held a note of finality. "Guys, you better get to your room. It's pretty late. Nudge, you can use the shower first."

"Okay," Nudge said, moving towards the door as the rest of the flock rose and headed out.

Xiang bit back a sharp gasp of panic and whipped around to run back to her room.

But before she could so much as put one foot in front of the other, the door opened and light flooded the hallway.

Nudge put her head around the door.

There was no escape now.

Nudge's sweet brown eyes filled with shock as she registered Xiang, who stood there frozen in the light, looking terrified.

"Xiang?" Nudge asked, still friendly but confused. "What are you doing here?"

"Get away from her, Nudge!"

Before Xiang could register what was going on, Fang twisted out from behind the door, his face dark with grim fury, and grabbed her wrists, hauling her against the wall and pinning her arms behind her swiftly.

She was trapped.

Xiang shut her eyes, feeling despair swallow her utterly. She mentally cursed herself.

_Just as they started to trust me..._

A tear of helplessness rolled down her cheek, and then another, before she could stop them.

The rest of the flock appeared in the hallway. They stopped as they saw Fang and Nudge, with Xiang trapped against the wall.

"Xiang?" Max asked.

Unlike Nudge, her voice was completely devoid of friendliness whatsoever. Her eyes shot her a fierce stare. Xiang knew she had better explain herself right away.

"I, I...I was..."

Xiang stammered, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth, her English vocabulary suddenly disappearing from her mind.

It was as if she no longer knew how to speak. The only thing she knew was that she was a failure. Completely and utterly.

She couldn't even defend herself.

"I knew it wasn't true," Fang growled, shoving Xiang roughly. " I told you, Max, over and over again, but none of you would believe me. She's nothing but a spy---a spy for the School."

* * *

**A/N: And there it's done. **

**Guys, I am SO sorry I have not updated this since November. I have been busy for so long. Not that anyone cares...xD**

**For a while, my creativity for this story just sort of stopped, and I wrote other lighter, fluffier stuff to overcome my writer's block--mostly for "Eyes Like Stars." So that's why this hasn't been updated in forever.**

**It took jennedy's review to get the creative juices flowing again; the review had such good constructive criticism. :D Thank you.**

**I want to thank everyone who has been reviewing, and especially to those who have been with the fic since the beginning. And FallingSnow14, I know I have promised you a request fic, two months ago, but it'll be a while until I get it done. I'm sorry...D:**

**So, this chapter is my apology for leaving this story in the dust for a while...I'm just glad I was able to write this. I just hope it doesn't read as a filler chapter...xD I tried to swing it onto the plot.**

**And now you know how bad I am at updating when other things crowd into my life. I will try to update as much as I can. **

**But reviews ALWAYS, ALWAYS are appreciated. Please, please review. Reviews encourage me to update more. :D **


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